In its war on rats, New York City has tried poison, reducing the amount of time garbage bags sit on streets, and even bombed burrows with dry ice.
But when officials tried to prevent rats from having babies in Bryant Park, they apparently failed.
In April, the Bryant Park Corporation purchased two dozen “ContraPest” bait stations with a liquid contraceptive from Arizona-based SenesTech for about $3,000, said the company’s CEO Joel Fruendt.
Fruendt said his product has worked for clients like Santa Clara County in California, as well as the Miami and Los Angeles zoos.
But the operators of the Midtown green space said the contraceptives were no match for New York City’s rats.
“The pilot ran for about a month-and-a-half but was unsuccessful,” said Joe Carella, a spokesperson for the Bryant Park Corporation. “We are looking into other contraceptive products or forms of administering contraceptives and may do another trial in the future.”
Kathleen Corrardi, Mayor Eric Adams’ rat czar, said during a July 25 community meeting that rats must eat a significant amount of the contraceptive-laced bait to become infertile. But that’s a hard sell given how much garbage lines the city’s streets.
“If garbage is available, it's very challenging to get them to eat something else,” Corradi said at the meeting. She added, “we're always exploring ways that we can do this better, more efficiently, less harm overall.”
Rat bait boxes are throughout Bryant Park tree and flowerbeds.
Stephen Rex Brown
Fruendt said he is worried officials are misinterpreting a lack of instant results from the ContraPest trial.
“When you're talking about fertility control, it's not an immediate kill, right? This takes really three to four months to where you really can start seeing the populations come down,” said Fruendt. “We don't know where they're placing it, how they're using it, how they're monitoring it.”
Fruendt added that, in his experience, “rats really love this stuff” because “it’s fatty and there’s some sweetener in it.”
Fruendt said he’s heading to New York next week for a meeting with officials from the city and Bryant Park to talk about what’s next for his rat contraceptives.
Carella said Bryant Park staff were able to reduce the number of rat sightings in the area through other strategies, including tracking each rat burrow in the park and eliminating the vermins’ food sources. Bait traps, including ones disguised as grey rocks, are a common sight in tree and flowerbeds around the park.
Bait traps have been deployed in Bryant Park that are disguised as rocks.
Stephen Rex Brown
Rat sightings by the park’s security staff dropped from more than 60 per night in April to about 20 each night this summer. A count by park security staff also found the number of rat burrows fell from about 40 in early April to almost none by mid-August, Carella said.
But that drop likely had nothing to do with the contraceptives, he added.
Brown rats — the species found in New York — reproduce at a fast clip. Female brown rats can have up to seven litters a year with an average of eight babies in each litter, according to Smithsonian's National Zoo.
While Freundt’s contraceptives are designed to temporarily make rats infertile, the city has previously made efforts to permanently sterilize wild animals. In 2016, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration attempted to reduce Staten Island's deer population through vasectomies. Six years after the program launch, there was about a 30% drop in deer counted in the borough, the Staten Island Advance reported.
The city’s primary approach to rat control has been to use poison bait traps. But during bird nesting season from April 30 to Sept. 30, the poison isn’t used in areas of the city’s parks where raptors and other birds that prey on rats are known to live. In 2021, New Yorkers mourned the death of Barry, a beloved Central Park barred owl who is believed to have been impaired from eating a poisoned rat and died after flying into the path of a parks department truck.
Brooklynite Phil Bergenson — a regular at Bryant Park’s ping pong tables — said anything except poison was simply a “politically correct” effort, and that rats would ultimately prevail.
“They've survived for millions of years,” he said. “You're not going to get rid of them.”
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They tried to stop New York City rats from having babies. They failed. - Gothamist
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