75 years of Alberta's mission to keep rats at bay

CBC News

· Posted: May 10, 2025 8:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Twice a year, a patrol squad scrutinizes barns, straw bales and atom retention bins on a 600-kilometre agelong of the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary. They're looking for rats, continuing a 75-year ngo to halt the rodents from making themselves astatine location successful the province.

"My grandfather," says Lincoln Poulin, the president of Poulin's Pest Control, "was known arsenic the antheral that killed 10 cardinal rats."

Napoleon Poulin invented a rodenticide called Poulin's Rat Doom and was a cardinal fig successful the aboriginal days of Alberta's rat power program, established successful 1950 aft Norway rats were discovered connected an Alberta farm.

The rodents, thought to originate successful China, archetypal arrived connected the eastbound seashore of North America successful 1775 and gradually dispersed west, travelling astir 24 kilometres per year and arriving successful Saskatchewan successful the 1920s.

By 1959, the fig of infestations successful Alberta accrued to 573. But aft 1959, they plummeted, reaching zero by 2003, according to the Alberta government. 

Outbreaks happen — but not often

Karen Wickerson, pest specializer with Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation, administers the Alberta Rat Control Program — meaning she's known successful immoderate circles arsenic Alberta's rat lady.

If a rat is found, the patrol sets up traps, bait stations and cameras. The goal is to get the rodents before they commencement a household and spread, said Wickerson.  

The rat power portion stretches on Alberta's eastbound bound betwixt Cold Lake, Alta., to the U.S. borderline with Montana. 

The patrol's absorption is connected eastern Alberta due to the fact that it's hard for rats to get implicit the mountains in the west, Montana has a precise debased rat colonisation successful the southbound and the northbound is excessively acold and sparsely populated, said Wickerson.

WATCH | Alberta rat patrol keeps an oculus retired for unwanted rodents: 

While determination are occasional outbreaks — similar the 2023 outbreaks at two recycling plants successful Calgary — they're rare. 

Usually, rats travel into Alberta by chance. 

"They tin beryllium hitchhikers connected a shipment of grain," said Shelby Oracheski, cultivation fieldman with the Municipal District of Wainwright, which is about 50 kilometres westbound of the Saskatchewan boundary. 

"With immoderate invasive species, the earlier you observe them, the much effectual you tin beryllium to get escaped of them." 

The occupation with rats

Bryan Skinner's household started their mixed atom and beef workplace successful 1950 — the aforesaid twelvemonth Alberta's rat programme got started — adjacent the village of Chauvin, about 10 kilometres westbound of the Saskatchewan boundary.

Without Alberta's rat patrol program, the rodents could origin a batch of harm to his farm, helium said. 

"Anything clip a rat wrecks your feed, you evidently can't provender it to your livestock, truthful it each becomes waste," helium said. 

It tin spell 15 years betwixt rat sightings connected his farm, said Skinner. 

Rats will chew on electrical wiring, causing harm to homes and different structures. They whitethorn besides transportation up to 50 antithetic pathogens and parasites that tin beryllium passed to humans. 

According to a survey published earlier this twelvemonth successful Science Advances, rats successful the United States origin an estimated $27 cardinal US successful damages annually to infrastructure, cultivation yields and contaminated nutrient supplies.

While Alberta does beforehand itself arsenic being rat-free, it does person a autochthonal rat — the bushy-tailed woodrat, which is besides known arsenic a packrat. It's recovered successful the Rocky Mountains and confederate parts of the province.

Packrats tin harm buildings by constructing stinky nests, said Wickerson, but they are not arsenic overmuch of a interest arsenic the invasive Norway rat. 

Property owners tin take to power packrats, but Norway rats indispensable beryllium controlled according to Alberta's laws.

It's amerciable to support favored rats successful Alberta.

The satellite is becoming rattier

Today, Norway rats are recovered connected each continent extracurricular of Antarctica.

A caller survey published successful Science Advances, recovered rat populations are exploding globally in cities like Washington, D.C.

The survey recovered clime alteration and a increasing quality colonisation were down the expanding fig of rats. Rats thrive successful warmer conditions, the survey noted, portion quality populations mean much garbage and homes for rats to unrecorded in.

Cities with less greenish spaces besides saw a greater summation successful rats.

In 2023, New York City appointed a rat czar to tackle the problem. 

However, immoderate places person managed to go rat-free successful caller years. In 2018, South Georgia got escaped of each its rats aft having them for 250 years. It's known arsenic the world's largest rodent eradication project.

The cardinal to Alberta's triumph was getting escaped of rats erstwhile they archetypal arrived, said Wickerson.

"We can't enactment retired small signs oregon rat fences astatine the border," she said. 

"The happening is erstwhile they bash get in, we don't fto them establish."