Owls & rat poison !!!

[Elen Sentier]

I just read this ... I thought it must be happening but didn't realise the extent. Bring back the terrier men (& women) before we poison everything !!!

[h=5]The Barn Owl Trust
[/h][h=5]SGARs (Rat poison) and Barn Owls -Let’s get the information right.

The vast majority of our Barn Owls, Kestrels, and Red Kites contain rat poison - How does this affect them and what can be done?

Owls and other raptors can be killed by the use of Second Generation Anti-coagulant Rodenticides (SGARs) even if the instructions are strictly followed. This type of rodenticide has been detected in up to 91% of Barn Owls.

David Ramsden, the Barn Owl Trust's Head of Conservation, argues that farmers and pest controllers are not being given sufficient correct information - with disastrous consequences for our wildlife.

Download the full article here (and scroll down to page 16) http://pestcontrolnews.com/pcn-issue-95/


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[crosslandkelly]

Interesting article Elen, thanks.

 

[_mark_]

Very sad to hear!

 

[EdS]

They have some very good articles in that publication - standard read at work

 

[British Red]

I just read this ... I thought it must be happening but didn't realise the extent. Bring back the terrier men (& women) before we poison everything !!!

Terriers are one tool in the armoury - but only one - and don't forget the backlash against "hunting with dogs".

Traps (both cage and kill), shooting, eliminating food sources, pouring concrete floors to outbuildings and yes, poison, do have their place. If we eliminate poison rats and mice will increase - terriers don't work in all locations . Its about using the right tool in the right location.

 

[Passer]

Brings back memories of the 60`s.
Numerous raptor species declined due to ingesting DDT from their prey.
The build up resulted in thin walled eggs, which often cracked in the nest.
We don`t appear to have learned the lesson!

 

[Macaroon]

+1 to what BR says - 'though I don't want to see any wildlife harmed, allow me to assure you that I never want to live with an even higher number of rodents than we currently have; they are a real problem where I live,
a constant resident in my garden - winter and summer - they infest my compost heap, which is kept as it should be in every respect - and threaten constantly with Weill's disease and others.

Two people within a mile of me have contracted it in the past five years and it's every bit as un-funny as Lymes disease...........you'll not be the same ever again if you get it...............atb mac

 

[British Red]

The problem is there is no easy. clean way of killing vermin. Shoot them? In the dark? With an air rifle? All of them?

Ask many householders and farmers and.......well all of us.....to lose a good few nights sleep in the hope of maybe getting a shot off at a small proportion of the rodent population and they will say.....No thanks

Traps? Well they maim and kill non target species. If you buy cage traps what do you do with the rat you've caught? Bear in mind most people don't have a gun.

Poison? Undeniably the first resort for most pest controllers - mainly because its cost effective and relatively low input. With traps you need to check them once or twice a day....who wants to pay a pest controller two callout charges a day? But there can be a problem of secondary poisoning if people don't check for bodies and burn or bury them. Often though the rat or mouse is not dead ....it staggers around in daylight because its sick and gets picked off by a predator.

There just are no easy answers to vermin sadly - but traps are getting more tightly regulated, as is hunting with dogs, as are firearms.....poison is often the most accessible option for people who don't want the diseases rodents carry.

I suspect over regulation has made the situation worse rather than better, so I'm not sure that more regulation is the answer

 

[Goatboy]

I agree with Red and Macaroon,

Poison has been made the acceptable way to do it. I used to enjoy a bit of vermin control, it was free for the farmer (well more often than not he'd get the offer of the bunnies and pigeons if he wanted them) and we'd hammer away at the rats taking care not to cause damage or alarm. But trying to get permission these days is like drawing teeth, "Oh it looks bad folk wandering about with guns." (Can guarantee I wouldn't be seen.) And with the new air rifle laws looming here it'll be harder than ever.

So the general public have made overpriced hit men out of Rentokil et al and there's now more poison sloshing around the system. (Plus our societies rubbish habits don't help).

 

[Bowlander]

The regs on poison are to be tightened I think. Personally I use all methods against rats in my shed and garden.

Permanent tunnel traps around the perimeter, live catch trap and terriers. I'll only use poison as a last resort as we have barn and tawny owls and I make an effort to find amd bury the carcasses.

Fenn traps set in tunnels with an excluder mean I've only ever caught rats.

 

[Stew]

Is this not what we expect to have happened? I'm not at all surprised that this is the case - it's been reported as a problem for predatory birds for years. I'm sure I remember studying something about this at school.
With regards to the solution to pests, those not aware of all sides want some perfect picture of pest removal. About 5 years back the man with his hawk that used to come to work to reduce the rabbit population (that dig holes all over) was asked not to come back as the new boss didn't like the idea of it. Ijit!

 

[Elen Sentier]

Mac, I'm late seeing this but we have rats because the farmer is messy and lazy etc, so they used to get in the compost. Paul (hubby) puts plasterers' mesh under all the bins which has small enough mesh that they can't get through. They still get in my loose heaps of course but some is safe. I keep trying to get farmer to have the terrier man down but he's dumb that way. A faconer friend and our local buzzard pair, and my cats, do keep the rabbits out of the garden. Folks deem to have lost all sense!

Stew, I quite agree !!!

behind every creative woman there's usually a very talented cat ...

 

[xylaria]

our council has done everything to encourage rats. No bins, bin bags because they are quicker to collect. Black bags collected once a fortnight, and then lay off the rat catcher.

I changed the way I composted. We tried the mesh, they just ate through the plastic bin. The kitchen waste gets put into a locked small bin, and anaerobicly rotted until it is mostly liquid and smells like really rank. This takes a month in a sealed bin, it is then mixed with the clippings and animal bedding pile or dug in. The smell disappers after a week.

We got to the point of using rat poison, it didnt seem to make a differnace, if rats have food, there will be rats. Britain will just need to be as clean as central europe.

 

[The Ratcatcher]

As a traditional Ratcatcher, who doesn't use poison at all, I agree with Bowlander that poison should be the last resort when everything else has failed. Unfortunately, the majority of pest controllers lack the skills to use the old-fashioned methods properly. Pest control training is primarily concerned with the correct use of pesticides, and alternative methods are only mentioned in passing.

The use of rodenticides by non-professionals is also a major problem. Every Pestie has at least one horror story about what they've found when amateur use of something bought from the local DIY store has failed . I was called in to deal with a rat infestation in a garden. The occupier said he'd tried to get rid of the rats himself, but was worried about the number of dead birds he'd found, and thought the rats had brought some disease which was killing the birds. When I arrived, I found grain-based rodenticide scattered loose around a bird table. When I pointed this out, the reply was "But it's rat poison, birds aren't supposed to eat it." Even worse, when I asked to see the package, it was clearly marked in bold "FOR INDOOR USE ONLY".

The pest control industryhas lost a lot of the rodenticides that used to be available due to the European Biocidal Products Directive, and at the last review of the Directive it took substantial lobbying by the industry to prevent a total ban of all anti-coagulant rodenticides.

There are a number of rodenticides available, described as First generation (FGAR) or Second generation (SGAR) rodenticides. FGAR agents are slow-acting multi-feed poisons which take 7-14 days to work, during which time the majority of the active ingredient has been excreted by the target. These agents pose only a small risk to wildlife but are not popular with the animal welfare lobby, because they take so long to bring about the death of the animal. SGAR's are much faster acting, mainly single-feed agents, which cause death within a few hours. The problem is, of course, that there is still a substantial amount of active agent left in the carcase. If the carcase is eaten by natural predators (or the neighbours cat) secondary poisoning is inevitable.

The public attitude to pest control is also a major problem. Those of us who do use traps have had traps vandalised or stolen by the well intentioned ignorant. People seem to think that a licenced trap which has to kill very quickly in order to be approved for legal use, is more cruel than a poison which takes two weeks to cause the animal to bleed to death. The big difference is that the trap is visible, the animal dying in it's burrow isn't.

I apologise if this has turned into a bit of a rant, but all Pesties are thoroughly fed up of being criticised. We have an important Public Health job to do, and most of us do the best we can to avoid unnecessary damage to the environment.