Energy & Environment Committee: Anticoagulant Rodenticide Restrictions - 2026-10-05

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3.5-flash from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The committee heard city updates, approved past minutes, discussed the progress of the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, and received a detailed presentation on the environmental impacts of anticoagulant rodenticides.

0:02 Meeting Opening and Volunteer Appeals — The committee opened with calls for volunteers for the upcoming Harvest Your Energy festival.
0:53 Initial City Updates — Sam shared updates from recent community tabling events before a brief power outage interrupted the presentation.
5:00 Resumed City Updates — Sam provided updates on McGlynn School solar installations and sustainability planning for the new high school.
7:08 Approval of Minutes — Approved the minutes of the previous meeting.
8:43 Future Presentation Topics — The committee discussed potential future presentations on stormwater management, depaving initiatives, and data centers.
16:40 Climate Action and Adaptation Plan Tracking — The committee discussed data collection progress and next steps for the five-year review of the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.
26:16 Rodenticide Impacts on Wildlife — Laura Kiesel of Save Arlington Wildlife presented on the ecological dangers of anticoagulant rodenticides, municipal restriction strategies, and alternative pest management methods.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: All right, hello everyone. One, two, three, four, five. We are still shy of quorum, you know. So Lois is coming a little late and Krabitha is out sick. I haven't heard anything from anyone else, so fingers crossed. But we can jump instead of, well, rather than do the minutes, we'll postpone that till we have quorum. But let's go do some city updates with Sam. What's going on in the world?

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: This past weekend, I was tabling, or Will was joining, so it's me. both on Saturday and Sunday. Bob was helping me on Saturday at the Oktoberfest, and we had a lot of great people come by. And then on Sunday at the Tufts Community Day, I found that with the back-to-back, there's a lot of people that I had talked to on Saturday, sort of waved as they walked along. They didn't have anything new to show them. So keeping that in mind in the future.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Is that frozen on y'all's end too? It's frozen for me, yeah. Okay, yeah, I just lost her. I blame that new apartment. Well, one other thing I will bring up. We got, I think it was four MEEC members signing up to volunteer at Harvester Energy. But Kyla would like to send out one final plea. So I'm going to put out in the chat our sign-up link for Harvest Your Energy volunteering. Please consider it. But otherwise, I'm sure I'll see you all there.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think so things are looking really good. I think. Um, we got food vendors, we got drinks, we got ice cream, we got music, a few different flavors of music. Um, yeah, I think we're, we're really pretty golden, but more volunteers, uh, will always be helpful. Uh, Oh, Sam just messaged me. Um, she has lost power at her apartment.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Okay. Um, they just moved in, I think like four days ago. So, um, here's hoping that's not a common occurrence. But so yeah, we're doing well on volunteers, but more is always merrier. Importantly, we'd love volunteers for our MEC table. I believe Josh was gonna help out there, but again, more is merrier. Getting that extra assistance would be nice. So please email me if you're interested, and I'll make sure you have all of them.

[John Rogers]: And I plan on doing the parking like I did last year. So, and I'm bringing my, I'll bring up my, I bring my pop-up tent and I'll bring that generator assembly thing. Demonstration.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: All right. Yeah. Love all of that. And I'll, I'll try to bounce between all the different tables here, but. Hey, welcome back Sam.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Um, here, Sam, why don't you finish up those, uh, those city updates? And, uh, I just did another pitch for harvest your energy, uh, volunteers, but otherwise the floor is yours.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Perfect. Sorry about that. Lost power for literally 20 seconds, but then my wife, I needed two minutes to fully reload again. Um, so I was saying an exciting thing that's happening or starting this week is the installation of solar on the McGlynn school. That should take a few weeks. They just wrapped up their HVAC upgrade to heat pumps. So that's very exciting going on in that school. We have, as Phil mentioned, Harvester Energy. And then on Thursday, we're doing utility bill checkups at the senior center with ABCD. And again, I'm still learning everything, getting caught up with everything. if there's something that you want me to push as a priority, please tell me while it's still early and I'm still going through everything.

[Robert Paine]: Sam, this is Bob Payne. Do you have any information about the new high school planning?

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Yes, so I actually believe that this planning committee is voting tomorrow or Wednesday and I can double check the events calendar tomorrow to vote on the HVAC system and then the solar array that they're going to be doing, whether it's going to be a PPA or it's going to be owned by the town and how much solar they will have. as well as I believe the construction committee is discussing potentially their vendor. I'm not involved with that committee. I'm more involved with the sustainability committee.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: doing like fast math in the participants. I think we are at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. It brings us to quorum. So let's knock out these minutes, and then I'm going to throw it to Josh for a little bit until Laura arrives for the main presentation of the evening.

[SPEAKER_10]: Will, I'm in the car for another 10 minutes. Can you throw it to someone else before Laura?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: For sure. Let's start with at least the minutes. Did everyone get a chance to review it? Any major notes, any problems? Are folks ready to accept them?

[Lois Grossman]: Ready for a motion to accept? Are you ready for a motion to accept?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: No. Luke. No. Dan. Bob. Yes. John. I abstain. And a yes from Will. With seven yeses, we will accept the minutes. Alrighty. So, Yeah, not on the agenda, but something I will speak to briefly. I've recently been in conversation with a handful of people, and I want to just kind of float some feelers out to see if there'd be interest in next wave of presenters. I did a bunch of work this week with Mystic River Watershed Association, and they have some folks that would be really excited to talk about stormwater management, CSOs, and a few other projects like that to see where Medford could fit into that pretty complex deluge of stormwater mitigation efforts.

And I've also been speaking with a few residents that are talking about air quality, specifically indoor air quality in public buildings. If either of those excite people, we got a couple minutes, I'd love to like see what you're thinking. And if you'd want to hear from these folks at a later date.

[Barry Ingber]: To throw another into the mix, though I haven't asked him yet, our friend Matt Barlow, who's presented a couple of times, we could ask him to speak and talk to us about the likely impacts on us of El Nino. Ooh, yes. So if people are interested, I can approach him.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: My professor earlier today was giving a pretty riveting description of what will be going on this time around, so I'm eager to hear more. Yeah, Bob.

[Robert Paine]: Regarding the Mississippi River Watershed Association, anything regarding mitigation of flooding due to big storms would be helpful. Obviously, since the Mississippi River runs right through Medford, that would be right up their alley.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, and actually I think I'm allowed to talk about this. We recently received an MVP grant on depaving efforts. So Somerville currently has a group called Depave Somerville, which basically is a volunteer group that goes to residences that ask for it and get rid of their asphalt. so that they can rewild it, replant, and get better infiltrating media in place. And we just received a grant combined with Malden and Everett to begin work doing workshops, some public workshops, as well as begin funding a tool shed. so that Medford residents can now also access this depaving effort. Because the more we can infiltrate our water, the better we can handle flooding in the future and recharge our groundwater. So that's a fun thing to be on the lookout for. It's still pretty nascent, but in the same vein that we're really excited about.

[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yes, well, I'm interested in that. I remember Brenda had mentioned this last year to us, the depaving effort in Somerville in that group. And I didn't know you were going to bring that up tonight, but I would like to have that group come and speak if others agree, because I'm interested. Yeah, and I recently started working with them. I think you said there's a grant for this?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, so I recently started volunteering with Deepave Somerville, so I'll just ask them at the next event. They'll be at Honk, actually. I can relay information if you want to stop by, say hi, or start wielding the sledgehammer, whichever you like.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: But I would also be delighted to ask them to join as well. Between them, and then I know Amanda Centrella, our parks planner, is kind of spearheading the DPAVE grant in Medford.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: So I will, I will float that as well. So you got a couple of cool options here. Yeah. Do we have any other thoughts, any other additions or any that were like, this should be a priority? This one feels important. I still haven't heard anything about our data center push. Um, I've been kind of sending out feelers, asking around, trying to find, uh, people that might want to speak on this. Um, so just keep, uh, yeah, keep your ears open, see if we can find someone who might, um, be more of a subject matter expert and lend some time for a committee. Um, that's one that I think deserves a little more, more attention and I, um,

[Lois Grossman]: I think I recently received a notice of some sort of a meeting on that.

[Lois Grossman]: Some organization that I get things from. I will try to find the right thing and send it to you. Okay, that would be incredible. But I think to me there's something coming up fairly soon about data centers. It might have been Mothers Out Front. It might have been JCAN, the Jewish Climate Action Network. So I'll try to find it.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Very good. Yeah, if you can track it down, I'll send a reminder, but I'll also make sure it's sent out into the world because we should know what's going on. Um, all right. I'm like scanning through if there's any other important systems we're missing here. I think we're doing okay. Okay. Um, and the last thing, uh, will be climate action plan updates with Josh, but I assume he's still in the car. So we do have a brief moment of rest, but if there's any, while we manage different schedules.

A growing list of topics, maybe more than we have meetings, but I'm kind of excited about that. I'm also beginning work on light pollution advocacy as well. If people are interested, I can talk to some folks that do light justice work that are pushing for more equitable lighting in cities in the Boston area. But yeah, feel free to email me if that's something that It's interesting to you. I'll send out this short list of possible next speakers, and I'd love to get your thoughts before I just start sending random people at us.

But with that, Josh, you got 10 or so minutes. Tell us about progress on this climate action plan matrix.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Thanks, Will, and thanks, y'all, for bearing with me on the phone. One of those events that, you know, they say runs till 6, that actually runs till 6.20, and then they're rushing back. So, you know, as always, I wanted to start by thanking y'all for taking the time to put info into the tracking document that we were using to refresh memories, to reintroduce it to Sam, this was a full breakdown of the 100 plus actions in the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan in preparation for the five-year review that I'm hoping that this committee can lead on of our progress on the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.

So what Brenda had, had helped me with before leaving was just finalizing some of the, uh, cells tracking updates and, uh, progress. Um, and, uh, you know, in full transparency, this, this has not been my month to be deep in spreadsheets. So I don't have any like new fun data viz, um, like I promised you for this week, but I wanted to sort of. use this time for us to maybe discuss what comes next, because the data collection is just meant to inform

how we advocate for improvements, for changes, and I wanted to get a sense of what kind of method would be appealing and sort of amenable to this group, whether it takes the form of a report, of a spreadsheet like this, where we say this is a priority, where we set sort of some ideas of what is impactful to us that the city is not working on. I figure without any data insights for me to provide to you, because I've been somewhat remiss on that front, I'd love your help collaboratively to sort of start figuring out how we want to turn whatever results we get into something useful. My idea is that the audience would be

The city more land, the city council more than than our residents to sort of, like, advocate, uh, upwards, um, within the system, but maybe that's, that's a wrong headed move. Um, and I'd welcome y'all's y'all's feedback.

[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah. Okay. So I had some sections that I didn't get to because it is an overwhelming project to get in touch with all these people. I will try to get to it in the next, you know, two months or a month or so. But I thought it'd be interesting to have a spreadsheet, but also a report that we can. Spreadsheet would be good, but maybe also a summary. It doesn't have to be long. that we can share, you know, with Sam and Alicia's approval, of course, the way it's written. And who does that go to? You know, that's the only thing, you know, yeah. There's so many things. My thought is that like each department, maybe, yeah, maybe each department that has, you know, a role in that. So that, you know, if there are things that aren't addressed,

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: And I know Sam, I owe you a long back on finding a date for the 2 of us to work through this database. So hopefully we'll have made that meeting happen and I'll have some more tangible impact for y'all. But like Loretta to that point, one of the you know, initial points of kind of lack of implementation that I'm noticing from a sort of aggregate view, rather than like a real detailed analysis, is that like a lot of the work that would have fallen on to Department of Public Works staff has been a particular, like, I think, sticking point for a lot of, like, not started early development.

And, uh, I'm curious if we think that should be directly. Um, it's always tricky because I think those are often the most overburdened public staff.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, I can agree there. I mean, every time I tried talking to these folks, they got 18 other things on their plate. I guess if there are specific avenues we can agree on, that would be like, we can actually just do that work. Um, I think I'm okay with just being told what to do. Like if you're like, Hey, we need a report that says this, like we can at least start that or I'll, I'd be interested to start it.

Um, this, this matrix does a lot of good in identifying things, but I wonder what the, if there is an easy next step, I will, I'm happy to defer to you.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I think now is a good opportunity for collaboration on really identifying a preferred audience, because it may be that this is more for the 350 volunteers in the city, or the folks who are involved in the greening efforts. Would Trees Medford be uh, an audience, would they be a collaborator? Um, I'm, I'm just trying to figure out what, what the scope of sort of next steps is. Cause obviously, you know, this first step of data collection was really overwhelming.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, I think we, we play in the, um, Actually, important question. How far off are we from completely done, like with the data collection portion?

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: It depends on my ability to email Sam back in a timely manner. Oh, OK. Pretty far. I think I can commit to having it ready by our December meeting, because I think I'll be out of the country for our November meeting.

[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, I would agree with that, because I have sections that I didn't get to fill in. that those departments are difficult for me to get into. So that would be good. I could try to commit to that too.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I like that. I'll set an action item on that. We'll set our proper and true deadline. I like that. Oh, and importantly, I forgot to mention in the city updates, we officially have a new tree warden. So a new person that we can harass and make sure that good things happen in Medford. So we're all very excited. At least I am. But definitely the right person to reach out to and start introducing ourselves.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes, let me pull it up. I don't remember it off the top of my head. say it was Rob. Jim Doyle. Jim Doyle, thank you. That's graceful of you.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes, Jim Doyle. There's going to be a lot of onboarding in these first couple of weeks, but as they get settled, I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about. So start thinking tree thoughts.

[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Well, I'm just checking my email. do you think, to see if Laura wrote?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Laura has just joined the call, so I'm actually going to, there's actually, I'm glad your brain's there, that's where I'm at too. Okay. So I was really excited when Loretta and Prabita introduced me to Laura. looks like she's been doing work for decades now on keeping animals safe in the Arlington and greater Boston area. And rather than try to list all of the different accolades here, I'm just going to welcome Laura here and give her the permission to share her screen. She's going to talk to us about a few different flavors of rodenticides and how we as a community can and maybe should get more involved.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let me try. I've been burnt by this before where it doesn't let me, but I also shared in case it doesn't, I also did share my slide with you. So let me try and make sure I can do it. And then if not, it says only the host can share this meeting. Okay, now it says I've been assigned as co-host. So let me try again. So screen. Okay. So is it sharing yet? Is it sharing? Can you see my screen?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you do just see it? Okay. I've had a weird thing where it says broadcast. So you see that slide with the barn owl where it says what are ARs?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it better now that I widescreened it or is it still, can people see that well or?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I can see everything except for the bottom left corner.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, I mean that's just that I'll read it out like so if everyone's okay I can just start going and hopefully if we hit any snags we can switch to will sharing it but I just thought first I just start with a little bit of information about what anticoagulant rodenticides are and then like what some of what Arlington and some other communities have done their impacts in the state etc So ARs, which are the initialism, it stands for anticoagulant rhodendocytes, and it includes both the first and second generation anticoagulants. That includes warfarin, diphacinone, and chloraphacinone for the FGARs, or first generation anticoagulants, and for the second generation anticoagulants, or SGARs, as the acronym is widely known, that's brodifacoum, bromodialone, difethiolone, and diphenicoum. So these anticoagulant rodenticides work by interfering with vitamin K production in a body's system, and vitamin K production is critical for blood clotting. So by inhibiting vitamin K production, what it means is an animal or a human that has ingested these rodenticides, their blood can't clot well, and so usually they will wind up hemorrhaging, getting a lot of internal hemorrhaging, or even if they like, even something very minor like a sneeze or a cough can cause an internal hemorrhage or can cause them to start bleeding through their nose or their lungs. And it can, if they have enough of these in their system, which is a lot less than you think, it can actually become fatal without like medical intervention and like kind of an external source of vitamin K supplementation.

The problem is, so rodents, the whole reason we have the second generation of these anticoagulants is because rodents developed really robust resistance to these poisons to the first generations within only a decade or two of their use. which means like similar to antibiotic resistance because it was used so much. It actually wasn't even really affecting a lot of rodents very much. So then they made a much more potent class, which is the second generations. And the second generations work a little differently. So with the first generations, the animal would have to have certain sustained dose over a period of several weeks until it built up and killed them, the rodent. Where as the second generation, in theory, they get a fatal dose with a single feeding. However, it's a lag time. So even though there's a fatal dose in that one feeding, it won't kill them until several days or a week later. But in that time frame, they're still eating the poison many more times that fatal dose. But the problem is also that resistance has now been documented in a lot of rodents for the second generation as well, especially even in the Northeast. There was a study that just came out over the summer that showed like 84% of house mice and over a third of the Norway rats or 35%.

in like four or five northeastern states were genetically resistant to these escars as well, meaning they could eat it indefinitely for weeks or sometimes months without effect. But the problem is their predators, the owls, the hawks, the foxes, do not have this resistance. So there's a mismatch there. So these rodents can sometimes eat these rodenticides for a long time, build it up very high in their system so that by the time an owl or hawk catches it, like it could be a fatal dose for that predator. And also a lot of these predators are not just eating a single mouse or rat, they're eating many, sometimes dozens within a week. And so if there's a lot of poison being used in an area where a lot of those rodents are like, just carrying these really heavy loads of these rodenticides in their body, it's going to kill a lot of the predators in that area. So predators can get it, again, from eating poisoned rodents. Some animals can get it by eating the bait directly. And for birds of prey, it's usually poisoned rodents. But like a lot of our smaller predator species, like raccoons, possums, skunks, actually are known to break into or access those bait stations, and so they can get killed by eating the bait directly. And there's even something called tertiary exposure. So secondary exposure is when, you know, an animal eats a poisoned mouse or rat and dies. But tertiary exposure is when a predator eats another predator that has eaten a poisoned rodent. And so it builds up with each kind of notch in that food chain. So say, like, you know, a turkey vulture eats a dead fox, that it's scavenging and that fox has eaten a lot of poisoned rats, like they can get a big load of that poison in their system and die.

So I'm going to backtrack a little to just talk about how these poisons really started getting onto people's radar as a problem. In the early 2000s, a couple of environmental organizations actually sued the EPA because the EPA's own research was showing that thousands of children were actually getting poisoned by rodenticides in the United States every year. By and large, the poisons that they were getting sick on were anticoagulants and usually the second generation or the scars at the time they were being sold over the counter.

And so the lawsuit was saying, we've got to do something about these poisons. Disproportionately, it was harming low-income children of color who are in very dense urban areas where these poisons were being used disproportionately. And the manufacturers were very resistant. This went back and forth in lawsuits for several years. Some conservative think tanks were saying, oh, well, it's acceptable for a certain number of children to get poisoned every year. In order to reduce rodents, but finally. In about 2015, the EPA came to a decision and lawsuit settlement with one of the manufacturers, and they pulled all of the escars from most over-the-counter sales, so you can't find escars really at hardware stores anymore. You can still find the first generations and other kinds of rat poisons in general consumer and hardware stores, but for the most part, you can't find escars. You can still, unfortunately, find them online on Amazon and sometimes in certain what are called tractor or farm supply stores, which are not as common. I think Waltham has one here in the Boston metro area, but there are still loopholes. But for the most part, the escars have reduced in terms of over-the-counter availability. The main source of escars are really pest control companies that are putting them out in those black boxes you see everywhere.

So again, this is what I just spoke about. NRDC and WEAC sued the EPA in 2015. They pulled decon products that had these escars in them, and the new EPA guidelines still allowed pest control operators to use them in bait stations. Now, I noticed anecdotally, that prior to 2015, I barely ever saw a bait box, but very quickly over a six to eight month period, I watched these bait boxes just proliferate. First, like in my direct neighborhood, and then I started seeing them more throughout other neighboring communities. So it really seemed like 2015 was a turning point. I think the EPA pulling it from store shelves gave pest companies a monopoly. We were also in a construction boom starting in 2015. So with a lot of construction, people were worried, like, what do we do about rats? And so pest companies were like, let's put out these bait boxes, and we have this product that you can't get in a regular store. And I think that's really helped proliferate their, like, prevalence in the metro area and the state and other states as well.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I'm very sorry to interrupt. I'm unable to change my box there, but is it possible to minimize my... I'm getting some feedback in my DMs here that the little box in the corner is distracting.

[John Rogers]: Yeah, you can probably wipe it off your screen with your finger. Just take the box and push it off. Yeah, perfect.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much. So unfortunately, I don't know if I can go back in my slide. So sorry about that. When I did that, I think I also changed the slide. Here in Arlington, So I had been advocating on these poisons since 2015 here in Arlington because that was when I noticed these poisons suddenly becoming a mainstay in my neighborhood. And actually right with my building, my complex, I started asking my landlords to stop. One day I just walked outside and there were 20 of these bait stations. And so it started first with trying to appeal to my landlords to not use this and then appealing to my board of health. And that was in 2015. So I had been already doing this for six years. And then in 2021, we lost our first bald eagle, C25. She was the first, along with her sibling, eagle to hatch in Arlington's borders in a century since DDT wiped the species out of the state and most of the region.

So that was a really, I think that really underscored to our town officials that this was a serious issue. Actually, only a few months prior to her death, we had tried to get a much more conservative kind of warrant, just kind of restricting or prohibiting the use of escars at construction projects, and that got shot down. But the death of our first bald eagle hatch in the town was a big deal, and there was a lot of public outcry. So our town officials suddenly were really interested in doing much more aggressive policies to kind of tackle this issue. Also, around the same time that our town meeting was underway, where we were considering these more aggressive policies, we lost this family of great horned owls at our local park, Monotomy Rocks Park. We had this great horned owl nest. And you can see in that slide, the top left hand, that's the mother and the two fledgling owls. And unfortunately, only like a week or two after that photo was taken, one of the mother and one of the fledglings was found dead in the park. And the animal control officer did do an impromptu dissection and like they had just tons of internal bleeding that is usually indicates anticoagulant exposure. And then we found the third fledgling a few days later. By that time, the body was too decayed to dissect or test. So unfortunately, it just, only the male survived, the male adult. And I don't know if people know much about great horned owls, but they mate for life. So it was really, and they do a little duet every night with the mates between each other. So it was just the male alone for like six months. And then the following breeding season in November, He got a new mate and he only had her for two weeks when unfortunately she was found collapsed on the ground. That's her picture on the right. And she was rushed to a rehabber, but unfortunately died. And she was tested and it was confirmed that it was rodenticide. So that also was happening as the town meeting session was underway. So I think that also really helped leverage the passage of these bills, that this was happening in real time as our bills were being considered. And then people might have heard of MK the Eagle. That was actually the mother of C25. It was a big deal when she got sick. So she got sick in early 2023 after we passed our bills.

And she unfortunately even died of a lung hemorrhage. She wound up choking on her blood. She also had avian flu, which probably complicated her chances for survival. And so that was the matriarch of that nest. And that is the, I think, basically the prominent, if not the sole nest of the Mystic River Watershed for these eagles that we share with Medford. So some of you have probably seen these eagles. They nest now near the Medford Boat Club. And sad news is that the succeeding mate to the male after MK died, her name was Faye, she actually died this spring of these anticoagulants. So that's three eagles confirmed from the same nest who have died. from these poisons. When MK died, I actually was announced on Facebook, we're going to have a vigil to just kind of mourn our loss, but also say we want change on these poisons. And I thought maybe a dozen or a couple dozen people would show up, because this was less than 24 hours notice, it was still quite cold out, it was the very, very beginning of March. And like over 300 people showed up. And I really think that that was a turning point in terms of state officials starting to take this issue a lot more seriously and a lot more movement going on outside of Arlington on this issue. Only a couple of weeks after this vigil, the city of Newton replicated Arlington's warrants that we did on the anticoagulants. And so specifically, that was in spring 2022. Arlington became the first municipality in Massachusetts to establish a public lands ban on escars. So unfortunately, due to pesticide preemption laws at the state, we can't ban on private property.

But we can ban it on our own, like municipal property. So we had a warrant saying we wanted to have this banned on all Arlington buildings, all Arlington, Town of Arlington owned buildings and properties. And so that passed. And even though we can't ban outright on a private property, we can file a homeowner petition. in the state legislature saying we want a waiver to that pesticide preemption law to be able to ban escorts on private property. So we did that as well, that same spring town meeting saying we wanted to have, you know, we did a home rule petition resolution and it passed like by a landslide. And so it was filed a few months later in the state legislature. We actually had to do it again in 2024 because every legislative session you have to Refile it and so it has to go back to the municipality to revote on it, which is kind of a pain But you know, it's worth it because it kind of keeps the pressure on the state And we just, this past town meeting season in spring 2026, we did a separate home rule petition on the first generation anticoagulants, which will be filed in January in the state legislature. And we also added FGARs to our public lands ban in the town of Arlington, as well as another rat poison called bromethalin, which is not an anticoagulant, but a neurotoxin. I'm not gonna talk about that one really tonight, but just to let you know, we also added that. Another thing we did, which was not by warrants, and most cities or communities don't do it by a warrant or ordinance, is we asked our Board of Health to change its policy around construction. So a lot of times when there's construction projects in a town or city borders, they have to get what's called a pre-demolition permit. And so the Board of Health actually has or the Department of Health for that municipality has a lot of power usually to say what the stipulations are for that pre-demolition permit. And what I found out with Arlington prior to 2022 is they were actually requiring bait stations on all construction projects prior to demolition. And just by requiring bait stations, even though they weren't requiring poisons per se in them, it just automatically incentivized rodenticides and basically all of the, I actually did a public records request and it was like all 32 of the construction projects in 2021 had rodenticides and I believe it was 29 out of the 32 had eschars in them. Even though most of them didn't even have rodent activity at the site, so usually a pest company would have to do an assessment of the site to see if there's rodent burrows or activity. And most of these sites didn't even have any, but they were just putting the poison down anyway, just as a so-called preventative, which it's not going to prevent rats if they're, in fact, it can be an attractant. So we had the Board of Health change that policy to not have bait stations and, in fact, ask any pest company if there's no rodents to not use anything or to use, you know, like, IPM, either birth control or dry ice or snap traps. And at least last I checked, escars haven't, or I think any anticoagulants or poisons hadn't really been used at construction projects since then. This is another option. for communities to consider. And since we did this in 2022, I believe at least 50 other communities have adopted some sort of public lands ban. Some of them have codified it with an ordinance. Some of them have done it more informally, though I personally try to say to codify it when you can because otherwise like a city can backslide and start using the poison again. Somerville just passed theirs. Literally this past like last week, a public lands ban. Nearly two dozen communities have now passed homo petition resolutions, with most of those now in the state legislature, either on escars or both escars and fcars. So all anticoagulants in addition to Arlington and just some of those many have included Newton, Belmont, Lexington, Lowell. And like I said, Somerville also just did that as well. So theirs will be going up soon. And I know Cambridge and Waltham and I are in discussions and they have plans to do this as well very soon.

And so some other ways that this is moving on the state level. In May 2024, the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Clinic filed a legal petition to the State Pesticide Board. That's the board through the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources that basically registers any and all pesticides, including rat poison use in the state. So the petition, and I'm one of the petitioners with like a handful of other advocates, asked the pesticide board to suspend the use of all anticoagulant rodenticides in Massachusetts. That's still under consideration. They did have the pesticide board hired a third party consultant that looked into this issue and authored two reports, which basically, for the most part, supported everything our petition stated in terms of its environmental and public health impacts. There was a public hearing a few months ago that went on for several hours about this, and now they're still kind of in the decision-making phase about how to respond to the petition. In January 2025, two bills were submitted in the state legislature that would prohibit anticoagulant revanticides in Massachusetts. This was a definite upgrade prior to that. The only bills in the state legislature were tracking bills, you know, that just would create like a database tracking where these poisons were used and when. But now these are prohibitions that are pending in the state legislature. And I really think that's because of all the local momentum from different communities and our legal petition.

And so one was a Senate bill and one was a House bill. I think both of them are kind of especially the House bill. I think they're right now still in the Ways and Means Committee kind of stalled there. That's usually what happens to a lot of bills is they can kind of get caught up in committee. So that's where we're currently at. Another thing that happened is the Mass Ready Act or the Environmental Bond Bill. An amendment was filed there that has passed in the Senate part that would allow towns and cities with pending home rule petitions to just ban anticoagulants outright. And also they would, the state would release sort of a unified policy that MDAR could use for all these communities. So it's not just a patchwork of different ways that it's, you know, that the rule is applied or enforced so that all the communities could do that.

Because again, due to pesticide preemption laws, the municipalities can ban, but this would actually make an exception just for anticoagulants and allow these towns and cities with these petitions to do it. And then I think going forward would allow towns and cities that don't have these petitions yet to just ban outright these chemicals throughout their borders on both public and private property. So that passed in the Senate. Right now, I don't think it was in the House version of the bill, and now it's in conference. I do know there's a push to kind of get this with this amendment passed. So that's one option that may be on the table. If like Medford or other communities are still pursuing homeown petitions, they may then have this ability to ban. It's a long shot, and I have to admit that part of me kind of is a little ambivalent about letting go of the home rule petition options because those are such strong, powerful pressuring mechanisms on the state, because I'd prefer to have a unified state prohibition on this, but I can see the merit of this as well.

So just going back a little bit. So in addition to Save Arlington Wildlife, I also have a little nonprofit called Save Massachusetts Wildlife or Save Mass Wildlife. Between 2024 and 2025, I think it was like from November 2024 till August 2025, we actually offered funding to a veterinary A veterinary clinic we were partnering with to test animals that was coming into that clinic either from rehabbers or the public where the animal died or died in route or someone found it dead in their backyard. I think we tested 44 animals and all of those 44, 40 were poisoned, died of poisoning. And also Cape Ann Wildlife, which is a raptor rehabilitator. They're based in Gloucester, but they've gotten a lot of

birds of prey from Arlington as well as Medford and right on that border that we share around the river. They have dozens, I'd have to look, but it's 120 page report that I could send the link to of animals that have been poisoned. And here are just some of the ones that we've had that have been brought to the clinic and have tested positive for poisoning. This was actually a graph that I made back in 2024 when we were redoing our home rule petition on escars for the town meeting. So this is already dated because even like six to eight months that occurred after that of testing, there were so many more animals, but this is what I offered back then.

To show how many animals we were getting just in Arlington so this doesn't even include the other towns and cities that the veterinary clinic was getting. getting reports from, so you can see what the kind of representation is. We actually had, overall, barred owls and red-tailed hawks were the most animals. I think they were pretty much equal or almost equal shares. We also had some great horned owls, a fair amount of Cooper's hawks, some foxes, skunks, as well as smaller wild rodents, like chipmunks.

squirrels. It's not on this, I believe, but we also had a great blue heron here in Arlington and a snapping turtle from Watertown that had been poisoned, so some more atypical species. And most of them that test for poisoning, this was pretty much consistent. So just to give a baseline, the lethal range of exposure starts at 100 parts per billion. but pretty much most of them tested well above three to 400 parts per billion. So more than triple to quadruple times the fatal dose. And many tested much higher than that, like six, seven, 800 parts per billion. And almost all of them had at least two SCARs, if not three or more in their system. And several of them, quite a few of them had both SCARs and FCARs in their system. And this is just a breakdown. So as you can see, like almost 98% had escars in their system. 40% had FGARs, and those 40% that had FGARs were also ones that had usually escars.

And you can see the species breakdown of what we had, like what I was just saying in terms of red-tailed hawks, barred owls, and then it goes down the line. We even had a couple of other atypical animals that weren't poisoned, didn't have lethal levels, but they had a fair amount of levels that was still concerning for where they are in the food chain, like shrews, some songbirds, like a grackle. So that was a surprising thing we found out as well.

And that's also kind of a breakdown. Birds of prey were the biggest percentage of that data set. And then carnivores and furbears and then small mammals. Again, that would be your shrews, your chipmunks and squirrels. And then that one snapping turtle or the songbird or like crows, things like that in the data set. But it's not just wildlife, you know, like pets are also very common victims of rodenticide poisoning, usually dogs especially. most of the time the animal is getting, the pet is getting into the bait directly. These bait stations are not tamper-proof, so a lot of times it's the bait somehow finds its way outside of the box and the dog gets into it. MSPCA told me they get between 40 and 60 cases of rodenticide poisoning annually in cats and dogs, most of them dogs. The cases peak throughout spring and fall. That's also when people tend to put out more poison. And it's very expensive, the testing and treatment, if the animal survives, can well exceed $5,000 and take weeks of supportive care. So they need to be on vitamin K for weeks, if not sometimes months. That's a dog, a small terrier across from Lexington, and she had to be on six weeks of vitamin K. She almost died.

But she turned a corner and it was because of that vitamin K. And they also had to do a blood transfusion with another dog to save her. But even after she checked out, her outpatient care lasted weeks to get her blood to clot again. I'm on fired or harassed at work for doing so. I'd recommend if you're interested in that to look up some of these articles. ProPublica also did several articles on this. Both ProPublica and The Intercept have a shared reporter. Her name is Sharon Lerner, and she's looked a lot into this issue.

And so again, as I just mentioned with the pet issue, a problem in addition to secondary poisoning is that these base stations are just not very tamper. They're not tamper proof at all. The EPA doesn't even allow that term tamper proof to be used, but even tamper resistant. They've said that the tamper resistance is not that great. These are just multiple examples I know of, of animals breaking open the bait stations. That one on the right hand corner is from Connecticut, but opossums are very well known for breaking into these bait stations and gorging on the bait and getting very sick.

That photo on the bottom left, that was a family of squirrels that broke open bait stations in East Arlington and started distributing the bait amongst themselves. And unfortunately, several days later, several of them were found dead around people's yards. And that top photo of a broken open bait station, that actually is from Medford, from the Whole Foods in Medford, just right on Alewife Brook Parkway. It was on the corner. And, you know, I actually asked Whole Foods, they weren't even aware that that was open but as you can see with all the leaves in it, it had been broken open for a while and you can see animals had been eating it. It was snowy that day and I could see what looked like either raccoon or possum tracks leading to and from the bait station. And I asked them what poison it was, and they kept insisting it wasn't poison, but I actually filed a complaint with the state pesticide inspector. They tested the poison, and it was indeed escars. It was bradyfacum. You know, someone's dog could have just gone up to this, too, and, like, started chomping on it. But yeah, so these bait stations are very flimsy, and it's another way that wildlife, unfortunately, do access the bait.

For instance, there was a big study a couple of years ago out of Chicago that looked at those possums, skunks, and raccoons, or what are known as our mesocarnivores in the urban areas. And it found that all 100% of 99 of these animals that a pest company had like euthanized had been exposed to eschars. So, like, it was ubiquitous, the exposure to the escars. And so most of these animals, most of these little mesocarnivores, like our possums and skunks, they found, yes, they do eat rodents, too, so that they were getting some secondary exposure, but they were finding a fair amount of documentation to show that they were also eating the bait directly, like this skunk mother in this photo. in her necropsy, she actually had bait still in her stomach. And unfortunately, she had babies in her pouch, you know, they're marsupials, they carry their young in their pouch. And that study even found that the babies had tested positive for eschar's poisoning, and they weren't eating yet, so they were getting it through nursing, they were getting it through their mother's milk. So this study was the first one to find that mammals could actually pass along eschar's poisoning from nursing their young. There's also other studies out west from mountain lions that have died to show that the fetuses of pregnant mountain lions also had eschar's exposure, as did the mother, so they could also pass it on to their babies in utero.

So, just to switch, because usually then people say, well, this sounds really bad, but we need these rodenticides, because rodents are such a huge issue, especially in metro areas that are densely populated, like the Boston metro area. I just completed a book on this issue, and I've written several pieces as a journalist, and I have to say I was even surprised when I first saw this. I already didn't really think that these poisons were very effective, but I could not find a single study to date, I still have not been able to identify one, that shows that anticoagulants reduce rodents on the population level in any kind of contiguous ecosystem, so meaning anything outside of a very tiny island.

there's no studies that show that these poisons do anything to reduce populations of these rats or mice, or that they actually reduce diseases associated with them. There's not a single study that shows that. And in fact, some data shows that, like, if you look at curve graphs, that rat and mice populations have gone up with the use of these poisons. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean causation, but it does show that these poisons aren't very effective at reducing rodents. And I do think that it's possible that they are contributing to the rise of rats and mice, ironically. And I think that's one of the ways is because we're killing the predators. And if you kill the predators off, you're going to inflate their prey, which is which are the rodents. So my backgrounds in wildlife biology, and I actually used to study predator prey dynamics. And that's like a one on one of like trophic cascades, is if you're going to kill off the predators, you're going to artificially inflate their prey.

So in addition to that as a possibility, the other reason we're seeing more rats in recent years is climate change. Warmer weather allows the animals to breed year round. It allows them to have more pups per litter. Because there's more dense populations now, more people equals more trash, and so that's going to attract more rodents. Construction, not necessarily Increases their populations, but it does disrupt their boroughs. So you will see them more because they're migrating more because of like, interferences with their boroughs through construction or development. The pandemic also made them more visible. You know, a lot of the restaurants closed down. People now work more from home or go to school more from home. We eat more at home. There's more food in our trash. And so there was that COVID shift. And I think people being home more just also means we notice them more. So that has all contributed to having more rats or more rats be visible to us than maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

But I do want to say and I'm not trying to, to belittle or understate that like rats or mice can be a public health problem. But I do want to say I feel a lot of it can be overstated to sometimes justify poison use. I get asked about rabies a lot when people put down poison. They're like, I'm terrified, rats gonna give me rabies. Rats do not spread rabies. There's never been a single case in all of North America of a rat spreading rabies to a person. Any mammal can in theory have rabies, but it just hasn't happened with rats. Overall, disease transmission from rats to humans is extremely low, and I've interviewed rat experts from all across the country on this, including the one who works for the Boston Urban Rat Study.

And also interestingly, studies have shown that poison rats may actually be much more likely to have and transmit diseases. So actually, these rodenticides may actually be making the likelihood of disease transmission to people more. That's because it lowers the rat's immune system, so they're more likely to have certain pathogens. But just to put it in perspective, in terms of the risk, a person is hundreds of times more likely to be bitten by a dog than a rat. A child is many, many, many more times to be poisoned by rodenticides. Again, calling back to that lawsuit from the early aughts about all those children that were poisoned every year than sickened by a rat. And again, many rats and mice are biologically resistant to eschars and, well, anticoagulants in general, so it's just not really working to reduce their populations or rein in a lot of these concerns anyway. And that's one of the studies that actually that I have. copy and paste it above, that was a study that found that rats that had anticoagulant rodenticides were much more likely to have and spread leptospirosis among themselves. The other thing I've noticed is that, and these are real pictures I've taken around Arlington, is sometimes I'll see dead or dying rats.

Not all the time, but I've seen it a few times in the past five or six or seven years. And they're in high foot traffic areas. The rat on the right that was dying, it was two houses from an elementary school that was letting out. That other rat on the left, he had blood coming out of his mouth. He was at Spy Pond Park. Two kids were playing ball like four feet from him. So that actually can increase disease transmission when these rats are acting in ways when they have these poisons in their system that they wouldn't act if they were healthy. They're more likely to go out and be around in broad daylight around young children or pets. And then they're more likely to spread disease or ectoparasites like ticks or fleas or whatever is on them.

Really the best way to control rats are prevention, which is sanitation and exclusion. If you're putting out bait boxes and you have overflowing dumpsters, well, they might not even go for those bait boxes. They're probably still going to just eat out of those dumpsters. But it's actually a double whammy, because you're just giving them two sources of food. You're giving them the bait, which they may not even be affected by if they're resistant, which is a good chance. And then they have the dumpsters. things like bird feeders, which have increased a lot since COVID. Studies have shown that rats are two to three times more likely to live around areas with bird feeders and regularly visit them. So even things like cleaning up our trash, encouraging people to take down their bird feeders, having rat-resistant or prove dumpsters or trash barrels, telling people to not take their trash out till pickup. And then working on exclusion, sealing up their holes or whatever porous entryways are in their buildings that the rats are getting into, or mice, will really help reduce the problem as well. There was a study out of California that actually compared two sites, locations, one where anticoagulant rodenticides were used, one where they were not. But instead, they put perches and nest boxes to encourage owls and hawks. And they found that the latter site with the predators and no poison had like 50% more rodent control than the one that used poison. So there is studies that now are comparing this and showing that having healthier predator populations is much better than poison.

This is just a slide that's from a market research company that found that pest companies are the biggest users and purchasers of these poisons. So really, I think a lot of people, homeowners and businesses, they don't even really know what's in those bait stations. They don't know about the impact. Unfortunately, pest companies legally do not have to really tell them the truth. And so they'll say things like, oh, it's not really hurting wildlife or the amount of poison a mouse eats is too small to hurt a hawk. But they are the biggest proliferator of these poisons in the state and the nation. And that is really one of the reasons this has become such a crisis in recent years.

I'm gonna speed through these. But like I said, we also did FGARs this past town meeting where we added that to our ban as well. And that's because of some of these studies that found they're also harming wildlife. They're harming screech owls and hawks and bobcats. We had an Arlington gray fox that died a year, a little over a year ago in Arlington. And what was surprising is that the main ingredient was a first generation anticoagulant and not a second generation in a really high amount. And gray foxes are very rare. They're a species of special, of greatest conservation need in the state. That was actually one of the reasons why Arlington added FGARs to our public lands ban and HOMO petition. And again, this is how it really makes the issue worse. Like a single gray fox eats between 1,500 and 3,000 rodents a year. You kill off that fox, that's now 1,500 to 3,000 more rodents that will be out in the environment and reproducing and having more rats and mice.

As with eschars, they're also quite deadly to pets and children. And actually, eschar poisonings of children have increased between 60 to 80% since eschars were pulled from over the counter, meaning a lot of people are buying the eschars and getting higher rates of poisoning in kids. And I think this is one of my last slides. So just precedent again, California has a moratorium right now on all anticoagulants, first and second generation. There's the state legislation right now that's pending that would seek to ban both escrows and both generations in the state. The legal petition also targets both generations as do many municipalities. So some just do escrows. And I didn't add it yet to this slide, but Rhode Island also just passed. So it's the first one in the Northeast in this region. It would be a phase out. First, it bans all consumer use. And then by 2029, it will ban all use across the board, including a pest control companies with a few exemptions for like agriculture and a couple of others in the States. So Rhode Island is now leading the way in New England. And that's some of the support we've really had here.

where we are in Arlington, but I just left it there in case folks are interested. Actually, I wanted to also say, so Mystic River Watershed, which includes Medford, is very happy to support any kind of local restrictions in Medford, basically any community in their watershed. And I know MSPCA would be glad to support any kind of local or municipal action in Medford on this issue. And I believe Mass Audubon would as well. I'm just going to end on a bit of shameless self-promotion. As I said, I have a book coming out in early April on this issue, and it looks at the whole U.S. impacts, but I do focus a lot on Massachusetts just because that's where I am, and that's where I've done a lot of research. It'll be out in April, but it is available for pre-order now if people are interested.

I can also send the link when I put this down, but if people are interested, let me know. I'm going to try to stop my share now, if I can.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're having a hard time stopping the share. I don't know if you can stop it at your end. see if we can just kick you out okay I can't even find you guys I don't know I think when I slid it out slid you guys off the screen now I'm having oh there you are I found you there I stopped it perfect yes so thank you so much I think that gives us quite a bit of

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: info to work with. So I really appreciate it. It looks like you drew quite a quite a crowd. You have a bit of a following participants here. But we have about 10 or so minutes that I'd love to devote to questions. And we'll wrap up around eight. And Loretta, I see your hand first.

[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Hi, hi, Laura, thank you so much for coming. That was really great presentation. I have a question. Let's put my glasses on. And as an aside thing, I kept turning my screen off. I kept hearing a noise outside. There were three raccoons at my door. So I was like, oh my God. And they're looking in the house and they're banging on the door and they're trying to get in the compost. So that's what was going on. But my question is, is there any data on how these rodenticides survive in our water resources?

[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: So, I was just wondering, you know, just the chemical. Transfer to a water supply does.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there is emerging data. It's understudy, but in the past few years, there's been more data showing that it gets into water supplies. There's been a lot of data out of Europe. actually showing that it gets into the water and it's been in fact impacting fish-eating birds like mergansers and herons over in Europe. And they have done some municipal water supplies here. And I believe a couple of municipalities in Massachusetts are actually looking into filtration for rodenticides because it may be getting in our water supplies, which is kind of scary. I don't know all the details. I've seen bait boxes sometimes very close to water, even though sometimes that's against the rules like they're supposed to be away a certain feet away from like a water body. But sometimes I've actually seen them submerged during flood events or when there's a heavy rainfall. So I do think it's getting into our water. I you know, and the studies overseas are showing that it's a problem. I just think it hasn't been studied as much here in the US. Unfortunately, we're catching up.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it is toxic. Like they have done laboratory studies to show when it gets in the water, it does affect the fish and it's toxic to them. And of course it can go up the food chain that way.

[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking if a predator like a bird or any animal dies near a water resource or in the water, so you answered the question, but be interesting to see the data. That's horrible. Thanks again for coming.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Leaving it open to see if anyone else. We also have participants from outside the committee. I encourage to ask questions if they would like as well.

[John Rogers]: I was just thinking about the water aspect of it. I know that back in the day they used to say that this also made the rodents leave your house to seek water.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. It does make them thirsty. And I I have come across several rats actually just a couple of weeks ago I came across a juvenile rat. right in Medford, near Duggar Park, like the path area near there. And it was clearly trying like, to go toward water, and it had died. And it had blood coming out of its mouth. So I bagged it and threw it out. Because I always worry it's poisoned. But yeah, they do seek out water sources, any animal actually that's been poisoned like this, it makes them thirsty.

[John Rogers]: So that might explain the, like, you know, it also gets into the water that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. You know, the snapping turtle that died, people ask, how do I think that happened? And I mean, I don't know for sure, but people are like, do they eat rats? You know, snapping turtles will eat anything that dies in the water. Like they eat carrion. And so I think, you know, rat probably died and fell in the river, or they, they sometimes do swim and maybe died of these rodenticide poisonings. And they go, they go on the bottom and then the snapping turtle scavenges them. and that's how it probably got poisoned.

[SPEAKER_04]: Sure. Laura, I was just curious as to how you got involved with this project, in this interest, and just a little bit about your background.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so my first degree is in journalism, but my second degree is in natural resources management and wildlife or conservation biology. So I already had an interest in a lot of environmental topics and impacts. And I worked several years for the town of Wellesley, which doesn't allow any synthetic pesticides on its public properties unless there's a public health emergency. And I was at the time living in an affordable housing complex here in Arlington in 2015 and I walked out some one day out of my apartment, and there was a pest control operator putting like 20 not even just one or two but like it was, it was almost two dozen bait stations are about two dozen every few feet around our three building complex and I just remember. You know, first he called them traps and I was like, well, it's poison, right? And his whole demeanor changed. And I said, well, couldn't it move up the food chain? You know, I had read about these poisons a little bit, but I didn't know that much about them. But I knew that they could pass along by secondary means, like a lot of poisons. And he said no. But that night I went home and I researched the poisons and I was horrified. And then I basically went to my landlord, asked them to stop using it. And he said he would, actually. The landlord was like, okay, we'll pull it. But then the pest company was like, oh, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Like, it doesn't harm anything else but the rodents. And it didn't even matter that I had a background wildlife biology. It didn't even matter that I showed the EPA paper where it says that it can work up the food chain, it's dangerous to children. And so then that basically started me down a rabbit hole of research and also a lot of pushback with my building for several years. And then that extended to the community, we were having a lot of construction. And then the Board of Health was telling people, oh, just hire pest companies and use poison. And so then I was appealing to the Board of Health, like, please don't tell them that. And so it just grew and grew. And since I'm a journalist, I decided to start covering it as a journalist, because I didn't wasn't seeing in those days in the mid teens, a lot of articles about this. And then when, you know, the bald eagles set up their nest, I remember that whole summer, I was watching them, I kept telling my partner, I just, I have a really bad feeling one of them is going to die by the end of the summer. And then that happened.

And that was when I started Save Arlington Wildlife. I had been advocating at that point for nearly seven years, but I was like, I just can't be Laura Kiesel, I need to have a group of people and name and that, you know, and so from there, I built up that group. Excellent. Thanks.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I'm not seeing any other questions, but I'd like to throw my half-baked question into the ring as well. We're a city that is, we got rats on the mind. People are talking a lot about rodents. Have you seen integrated pest management systems or groups or policies that you find to be better substitutes? Because as we start pushing towards ending for denticide use, we're going to get a lot of people asking about what the alternatives are, and I'm curious what your experience with that is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can tell you what's happened here in Arlington. I know that they took some bait boxes away entirely. Like I said, for construction projects, they just took them away. And they found, wow, you know what? It didn't make the problem worse at all. There was no change. Because again, I think part of the problem is the rodenticide for the rats. I mean, you're leaving out food for them. The bait is food. So you are attracting them to an area that it's not already there. And it will kill some of them, but many it won't kill. And then if you're killing off their predators that eat them, you're gonna have more rats. So sometimes just taking those bait boxes away can help. Like I said, sanitation and exclusion, better dumpster management, you know, trying to encourage people. I know it can be hard to get people to change lifestyle choices, but I think even gentle encouragement to take down bird feeders or not take trash out. I know in New York City, I wrote about this at the end of my book, they did a pilot project where they got rats, they got these dumpsters in the restaurant sector of New York City. And obviously, New York City, I think is one of the raddiest cities in

the whole Northeastern region, one of the raddiest in the country, but they did these dumpsters that were steel, like galvanized steel, and you can only access them by a key card, and then they open them only for trash day, when they're putting trash in or when it's garbage day to get picked up. And just from doing that in this one neighborhood in Harlem, they had a 60% decrease in rats in one year in rat sightings. and overall I think a quarter in the city just I think in New York I grew up in New York City just by getting more places to just use Toters, because I don't know if you know, a big thing in New York City was just having a bunch of bags, you know, like not even in trash cans, and that was a big problem. So even just better containment. In Somerville, I've spoken to people who say that, you know, and it's not that expensive just getting either a steel trash can with clasping lids or a steel trash shed that locks is a big deal, so if you can't not take your trash out, we're only a household of two, it's pretty easy to not take our trash to once a week, but if you're a family of seven, that may be harder, if you have a baby at home, but if you have that metal trash shed, that can really help, so really that kind of exclusion. I did do-it-yourself, when I lived in that building, that affordable housing building, I do want to say we did not have a rodent problem in the building until about eight months after the poison was put down, and then our building started to get a mouse problem. So it really did kind of, for me, seem to underscore, wow, this can actually cause a problem, or at least not prevent one, where one didn't exist. And I asked my landlords, will you do exclusion? And they did a little bit. They caulked a few holes, but I really had to go in there with steel wool and copper and a caulk and find every single hole. And I will say I was one of the few people in my building that didn't get mice. It probably also helped that I had a couple of indoor cats as well. It does help sometimes for mice to have some indoor cats. So I do think that, and I know in Arlington and some other cities, they've done some pilots of fertility control, birth control, which actually can knock down their numbers. It's had some mixed results. It can work well, I think, in certain circumstances. It's not gonna work if you're not doing the sanitation part, though. So I think some places that say it doesn't work as well, that's the problem, is the sanitation. There's still a lot of overflowing dumpsters. and other issues, but it can help if that is also being addressed, knock down their numbers. There's also like smart boxes, which are these high caliber electric, they shock the animal, not crazy about it, but I know that Somerville and Arlington and Cambridge have all tried it with decent results. So those are other pilots that have helped complement this as well.

I will say, I know Medford's thinking of going to every other trash pickup, And that concerns me. I don't know if you guys do do every other week for trash pickup. I'm worried that might make it worse if people have the more overflowing trash or dumpsters. Because my building actually, that building when we did get a really bad mouse problem, the landlord finally did for about six months did twice a week. So I think it was like Mondays and Thursdays, we did trash and that helps. So it actually increasing the trash pickup really helped for a while.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Total sense, yeah. I know last, it's not last week, two weeks ago was the RAT conference was held in Boston. Yeah. And that was, I think the recordings are online. So I encourage people, it was a fun listen. I just had that running like a podcast all day.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. All right. We are hitting our eight o'clock cutoff time. Louise, if we think we can keep it very brief, we'll do it. But otherwise, yeah, we're going to make to wrap up in a minute.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'll be very brief. Laura, Medford is going to every other trash pickup starting July of 2027. I've actually verified this several times with the DPW. department and I will say that I have personally seen when I've come home late at night the night before trash pickup, that our trash buckets are not rodent proof. I have seen squirrels go right up the front and flip the lid and get themselves in and then somehow get themselves out. Personally, it was quite amazing when you come home from work at one o'clock in the morning. And so, yes, I think it's a big concern. I'm grateful that we don't have a problem in my area.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, it's alongside rats, trash is a hot button issue. Yeah, I think about it a lot. So I'm happy to hear from you and happy to keep thinking about solutions and ways forward. So thank you so much, Laura.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I have you shared your presentation with us. Do I have permission to share it out with with our members here?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I can also send it as a PDF as well. Because I think I might have done view only just so it doesn't get edited by accident, but I can also do a PDF.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Thank you again, Laura. And this is Save Arlington Wildlife. Follow them on social medias. I'm going to do your plug for you because you got to do it. It's really, it's really incredible stuff.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Of course, happy to have you, and hopefully we'll be able to funnel any extra lingering questions your way via email. Take care and have a lovely rest of your evening.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Second, third, fourth. All right, perfect. I will see you all November 3rd.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Oh, I'll see pretty much all of you at Harvester Energy, and if I don't, you will get emails from me. I'll be very, very cross. So take care, have a good evening, and I'll see you all in two weeks.