The latest front in New York City’s war on rats? Some 600,000 tree beds on the street.
City officials on Sunday announced they are investing $877,000 to establish new teams focused on clearing out rat burrows in tree pits by using carbon-monoxide pumps. The strategy, which involves injecting carbon monoxide throughout rat tunnels under tree beds to asphyxiate the rodents, was first piloted on the Upper East Side two years ago. Street tree beds were the subject of more than 2,300 rat-related 311 complaints last year, according to City Hall.
“Those holes that you see in your tree beds, those are not simply roots that are being grown,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference in Crown Heights. “That is a place where rats have learned to use as a safe haven, and they have been ignored for years, but we're going to tackle them head on.”
“We are reclaiming public space, fighting rats and improving quality of life for New Yorkers,” he added before participating in a demonstration at a tree bed near the Stroud Playground on Park Place.
The funding will support hiring 12 full-time workers to inspect tree beds and perform other services under the supervision of exterminators and a forester, officials said. The “non-pesticide,” “non-toxic” approach is safe for trees and does not affect the surrounding soil, city Parks Commissioner Iris Rodriguez-Rosa said.
Some animal advocates criticized the new strategy as cruel.
“Continued investment into better garbage bins and amped-up trash collection efforts have already helped to drive rat numbers down, and an expansion of the city’s rat birth-control trials will undoubtedly help even more, because killing will only accelerate the breeding of survivors and inevitable newcomers,” Ashley Byrne, director at the nonprofit People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said in a statement. “The long-term solution does not lie in the mass slaughter of small animals who are trying to eke out an existence, just like any New Yorker.”
Reducing the city’s rat population has been a major initiative for Adams. His administration has begun implementing trash containerization, or requiring the disposal of garbage in bins with secure lids, in part to prevent what he has called "rat buffets." Adams also hired the city’s first “rat czar,” Kathleen Corradi, who has led efforts like “Rat Pack” education events and an inaugural “Rat Summit” convening rodent experts.
“Rats are smart. I had a rat in my backyard that would pop the trap off and eat the food,” Adams said, touting a citywide decline in complaints of rat sightings in recent years. “They are extremely skillful at surviving … and so our goal is to outsmart them.”
