What Toronto can learn from Alberta when it comes to rats

Rat-specific calls in Toronto up 35%, one exterminator says
The former head of Alberta’s Rat Control Program has a story to tell Torontonians about how that province went to war against the pests … and won.
«We went in with firearms, we went in with live active bait … and we also went in with traps,» John Bourne recalled from Colorado Springs during a Skype interview Wednesday with CBC News.
Alberta has held the title of being pretty much rat-free since the 1950s because of an aggressive program which had people like Bourne patrolling the Alberta-Saskatchewan border on the lookout for the wiley vermin.
«It’s kind of like a search and destroy,» Bourne told CBC when he was leader of the program back in 2000. «The guile and the cunning of these animals is just so remarkable. You just can’t let your guard down.»
Bourne has some advice for Toronto about how to handle the pests, with rat-specific calls up 35 per cent around the city in the past year, according to YaniSivenas of The Exterminators Inc.
In one ward in the Danforth-Woodbine area, rat complaints to the city nearly doubled in the last year.
Residents there said they have been fighting with rat infestations for the last decade, but have noticed an escalation in their population in the past two or three years. They think it has to do with nearby condo developments driving the rats out of their underground homes.

Rat-specific calls in Toronto up 35%, one exterminator says
The former head of Alberta’s Rat Control Program has a story to tell Torontonians about how that province went to war against the pests … and won.
«We went in with firearms, we went in with live active bait … and we also went in with traps,» John Bourne recalled from Colorado Springs during a Skype interview Wednesday with CBC News.
Alberta has held the title of being pretty much rat-free since the 1950s because of an aggressive program which had people like Bourne patrolling the Alberta-Saskatchewan border on the lookout for the wiley vermin.
«It’s kind of like a search and destroy,» Bourne told CBC when he was leader of the program back in 2000. «The guile and the cunning of these animals is just so remarkable. You just can’t let your guard down.»
Bourne has some advice for Toronto about how to handle the pests, with rat-specific calls up 35 per cent around the city in the past year, according to YaniSivenas of The Exterminators Inc.
In one ward in the Danforth-Woodbine area, rat complaints to the city nearly doubled in the last year.
Residents there said they have been fighting with rat infestations for the last decade, but have noticed an escalation in their population in the past two or three years. They think it has to do with nearby condo developments driving the rats out of their underground homes.

cbc.ca