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Rat Poison Box solutions on Long Island

  • Melissa Feudi

  • February 17, 2025

  • 638 words

  • 4 minutes

I feel that in order to effectively control a problem, it is essential to understand it. CLEARLY, many people on Long Island do not understand how to remove rats. The problem is increasing year after year and it breaks my heart to see owls and eagles sick or die as a result. We are continuing to implement dangerous solutions and they will only make the situation worse.

RAT POISON NEVER WORKS

There are many many documents out there about this problem and a lot of research which I will reference below . Through my research, I’ve read that rat poison never works, except for instances on islands that have no predators. An island off of Galapagos succeeded and everyone adopting this very lazy and dangerous solution… the island had no predators and the rats were decimating the island with their feces and their eating habits. The poison worked here because the predators that could’ve kept the rats and check didn’t exist and a mass killing event was appropriate because the island really only inhabited migratory seabirds.

Long Island is not that kind of island. We have birds of prey.

Fast forward—everybody loves this bait, drop poison. There’s so much fear about rats. Many studies suggest that getting rid of rats by poisoning them increases disease by leaving us with more garbage.

I think the first step is to understand these rats and how they got here, which also helps explain how they got to that island. Norway rats thrive alongside humans, especially living under man-made structures, such as docks and boat tunnels. Our shores should have deep-rooted, fibrous vegetation to deter them, but instead, we have shallow-rooted lawns, making it easy for rats to burrow.

Preventing rats in towns and homes

Cleaning up

Rats are associated with filth for a reason. One of the best way to reduce rat populations is to clean and cover food waste properly. Poison is the bandaid over issues with cleanliness. Locked garbages. Cleaned spills. Proper contained trash. Why should we allow restaurants to not clean up after themselves?

Garden choices

English ivy is labeled on a few sites as rat havens and for a good reason. It’s true, and I’ve personally experienced it firsthand on both coasts. You can often find them loving their dark, somewhat indigenous vegetation as the perfect home.

The reason why rats love English ivy is because they are pest free clean spaces for them with little competition.

Unlike native vegetation that feeds an entire ecosystem and is the beginning of the food chain, English ivy has no predators. No insects have evolved to eat its leaves. Meaning no spiders are there to eat the bugs. No bugs in an ivy pile also mean no amphibians or other competitive rodents or birds looking for food. This also means predators like hawks and other prey animals like foxes won’t bother hunting around English ivy, creating a perfect refuge for invasive rats.

Since other non-native plants also disrupt these natural food chains, supporting native ecosystems is the key to controlling pests naturally.

 

Considering that non native plants outside of ivy also carry these traits you can see how supporting the ecosystem naturally removes the pests.

 

Who does the poison kill:

References:

Northport Example:

 

 

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