Mt Whitney Zone Forums The Chat Room Potent New Rat Poison Killing Cal Wildlife

Potent new rat poisons killing California wildlife

By Tom Knudson
tknudson@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Apr. 17, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
Last Modified: Sunday, Apr. 17, 2011 - 2:12 pm

Outside Palm Desert, a young bobcat dies mysteriously at a nature preserve. South of Nevada City, a farmer finds an owl dead near his decoy shed. In San Rafael, a red-shouldered hawk bleeds heavily from its mouth and nose before succumbing at an animal care center.

Each of those incidents shares a link to a widely used toxin that is turning up at dangerous levels in wildlife across California: rat poison.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/04/17/3558267/potent-new-rat-poisons-killing.html#ixzz1Jq1aXHq4

Boy what a sad story after reading the artical I about cried, I sure hope they find a solution to this serious problem, its scary! This is one of the reasons I go hiking,Peakbagging, etc. to enjoy the wildlife I get to see. Just makes me mad that they cant find another way to kill there rats.

A couple of years back, I went to a Mountain Lion conservation meeting here in Murrieta and the cat expert told us a large amount of wildlife dies from secondary poisoning from Rat Poison. Not just Mountain Lions, but Coyotes, Bobcats and even raptors such as Hawks, Eagles and Ravens. Two Mountain Lions in the Santa Monica Mountains died from secondary ingestion of rat poison back in 2005. Mountain Lions have also died from eating dead Coyotes who have either ingested rat poison or the animals that ingested the poison.

Rat Poison is also the cause of many pet deaths, including cats and dogs. Children ingesting rat poison has gone up 45% in the last 10 years.

Thanks for the reference. I've been worried about that for years. DWR (California Snow Surveys) routinely leave rat poison in the backcountry snow survey cabins they use. I'm pretty sure we've stopped them from doing it in the National Park, but know it's going on in the other USFS cabins. I'll circulate this article and hope it gets their attention.

Also, the dope growers bring rodenticides into their grow sites, along with fertilizer and other nasty chemicals. Some years back, a guy doing an owl survey found an unexplained "hole" in his distribution of data. It correlated with a bunch of known dope growing sites. There was no followup, but it was pretty suspicious. Not to get this thread too far afield, but in all of the arguments for legalizing MJ, I've never seen anything about where it comes from and what ecological damage the growing of it does.

g.

Interesting -- the very same passages in the article caught my eye, too (marijuana growers) Definitely relative to the article and the wildlife concern in general.

A friend of mine mentioned that it was probably okay to use the stuff in the suburbs, but I beg to differ because I have found the dead rodents always outside of the original poisoned premises (I only allow traps to be used on any of my properties)

B

My dog was just poisoned a few months ago with rat poison.Not sure if it was on purpose from one of my nasty neighbors whom is capable of such dastardly deeds.
Vet luckily did a blood clotting test just before she performed surgery on what she thought was bowl obtruction.Vit K and dog is doing fine.

Because I have overly active clotting factors, I need rat poison (Warfarin/Coumadin) just to stay alive.

Might be cheaper if you buy it over the counter.

wagga, ask Rod or me........rather take warfarin than chemo!

Chemo sucks for sure.Radiation aint no piece of cake especially when they nuke your junk.

I tried that, but my cats started looking at me in a new and terrifying way.