'We are at war': New York's rat crisis made worse by climate change
Source: The Guardian
'We are at war': New York's rat crisis made worse by climate change
Rat-related callouts rise as experts say warming temperatures are helping New York’s rats feed and mate longer into the year
Oliver Milman in New York
Fri 21 Dec 2018 06.00 GMT
The discarded slices of pizza that litter New York’s streets have long fuelled its sizeable population of rats, but now the city’s growing swarm has a new reason to enjoy their home – warming temperatures.
City officials have reported an increasing number of calls from residents complaining about rats, and have warned that milder winters are helping them feed and mate longer into the year. And as winters warm up, more frequent outdoor activity by humans is adding to the litter rats thrive upon.
Rat-related complaints have been on the rise over the past four years, with 19,152 calls made to the city last year, an increase of about 10% on 2016. There are no reliable figures on the number of rats in New York – estimates range from 250,000 to tens of millions – but the surge in rat activity has been replicated in other cities. Houston, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia have experienced large increases in calls to pest control.
Veteran anti-rat strategists have, in part, blamed climate change. “It’s a complex issue but we are seeing rat population increases around the world now,” said Bobby Corrigan, a sought-after rat-catching consultant who once spent a week living in a rat-infested barn in Indiana as part of his PhD research.
“Requests for my services are through the roof, I can’t keep up with them,” he said. “You speak to any health commissioner from Boston to DC and the trend is upwards.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/21/new-york-rat-crisis-climate-change