Yes, because a US government agency has never been wrong (on a colossal scale) about anything before!
I am sure that dropping loose, granulated, water soluble poison onto a small island in a water way couldn’t possibly end up in the ecosystem? Surely no other, unintended creatures might ingest it and in turn be ingested.
I’ll just leave you with this bit of careful planning:
Brodifacoum is used pretty extensively around my local area (Wellington, New Zealand) to target possums and rats (both of which are non-native and eat eggs and young birds). I don’t know how effective it is but I do know that it gets used right next to our local predator free wildliife sanctuary and that we have seen a massive explosion in local birdlife over the last 10 years.
I don’t know whether it’s the right answer in this particular case but I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand as a potential solution to a problem.
it is instructive to consider that USFWS (like any other gov entity) has an incentive to justify their existence by creating work, regardless of whether the work is useful or harmful
Thanks for that jheiss. I had no idea such programs existed and were successful.
And therein lies the flaw… every single mouse that they initially studied must be long dead of natural causes by now. Problem solved!
This is used pretty regularly in NZ to control non-native mammal pests with very successful results.
To be clear, I am not specifically against the use of a poison to eradicate a menace to the local ecosystem. I am against the proposed method of application. FTA: “USFWS wants to use helicopters to drop 1.3 metric tons of brodifacoum (in the form of loose rat poison pellets) over the Farallon Islands…” So, at best a ‘spray and pray’ approach of distribution which will result in the poison dissolving in any gathered water, ponds, puddles, etc and being ingested by an that drink from this source.
A better solution would be to employ a targeted approach with small packets of poison being placed (by hand) by USFWS agents in areas of high population concentration and let them eat it. Pretty sure that 500ml milk carton (styled) packaging is easily available and mice/rats will easily tear open a milk carton if it senses a food source inside. A little peanut butter and problem solved.
Do this and you focus the rat poison where it is most needed. You drastically reduce cross sampling. You use less poison. Win/Win/Win.
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