FROM PROTECT THE WILD—LOCAL AUTHORITIES & RODENTICIDES

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Councils don't even bother recording the mass killing of wildlife by rodenticides Freedom of Information requests reveal a black hole at the heart of publicly-funded rodent control industry. GLEN BLACK AUG 8 READ IN APP Composite image showing a colour-shifted photo of rodenticide being placed in an outdoor bait box overlayed with photos of a hedgehog and barn owl This is the fifth in a series of articles highlighting the need to ban rodenticides in the UK. Last month, we explored how the pest control industry - worth over $25bn globally - has been left to regulate itself by the UK government, with disastrous effects for non-target wildlife. You can read our previous articles here, here, here and here. In the coming weeks we will outline how other countries are miles ahead of the UK in terms of recognising the threat that rodenticides pose to both animal rights and our fragile ecosystems. Rodenticides are lethal, not only to rodents but to a wide variety of other ‘non-target species’ as well. However, despite their widespread use, there is comparatively little understanding of their wider impacts. Whilst pest controllers say they have data demonstrating the effectiveness of their methods, Protect the Wild has uncovered major data gaps that undermine their argument. Last month we reported on the ‘pest’ control industry’s lack of oversight. Freedom of information (FOI) requests by Protect the Wild to councils across the UK reveal that, whether the job was contracted out or conducted by an in-house team, few councils carried out oversight on the pest control work itself in the form of audits or compliance checks. Beyond this lack of oversight, there is also a black hole around the impact of this work on non-target species. As a result of another tranche of FOIs submitted by Protect the Wild to UK councils, it became clear that getting data on how many non-target species are affected by rodenticides as a result of ‘pest’ control would be impossible because no such data exists. There is no statutory requirement to collect or report how many non-target species are harmed by rodenticides, whilst the ‘pest’ control industry claim it’s impossible to know. See no evil, hear no evil Of the 384 councils that Protect the Wild contacted, 311 had responded at the time of writing. Across the responses from all these councils, a clear pattern stands out: most have no information on secondary rodenticide harm, and where such information exists, it only accounts for domestic dogs. Protect the Wild asked all councils the same set of questions, which focused on acquiring records for the “known injury or death of animals that are not rats or mice that have occurred or are suspected to have occurred as a result of rodent control operations”. A total of 161 councils stated that they did not hold any such information, whilst a further 139 said their records showed no such cases. Only nine councils held information on accidental or suspected non-target casualties, something this article will return to later. The remaining two refused to provide information. Although many councils simply said they didn’t hold the information, some offered a detail that put that lack of information into context. Cambridgeshire County Council, for example, said that: There are no contractual provisions, standing instructions or service specifications requiring pest control contractors to report non-target casualties to the Council. Dozens of councils gave variations of this statement, making it clear that data on the harm caused by rodenticides to non-target species simply doesn’t exist across much of the country. South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council provided an even clearer reason for this data gap when it said that: there is no legal requirement around recording this type of data. There is no statutory requirement for recording or reporting the impact of rodenticides on non-target species, even though we know that the number of animals hurt and killed by them is not zero. Surrey Heath Borough Council’s response highlighted one ‘pest’ control company’s reason for not voluntarily recording such information: I asked the question to the contractor and the response was: ‘This data is undeterminable and therefore records are not held’. In other words, it is ‘impossible’ to determine what non-target animals might be affected by rodenticides, so no attempt is made to do so. Impossible to ignore The issue of unintended and secondary poisoning cannot be dismissed. In fact, the ‘pest’ control industry itself recognises how significant this issue is. In 2015, the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU), an industry body which acts as a regulator (in the absence of a proper statutory oversight body), created the Code of Best Practice as a condition of continued authorisation by the government’s Health and Safety Executive. However, the Code has proved ineffective. Despite this allegedly safer use of rodenticides, the rate of secondary poisoning in monitored species has not declined and in some cases has worsened. This was such a problem that even the industry couldn’t ignore it. As a result, by 2024, new guidance was introduced by CRRU and HSE that disallowed the use of SGARs “away from buildings”. This was driven by data showing that nearly 90% of barn owls had been exposed to Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides (SGARs) despite the 2015 changes. This requirement should now be stated on the labelling of SGARs, and so can, in theory, be legally enforced. However, as Protect the Wild previously highlighted, the requirement is still problematic because ‘pest’ controllers are still allowed to place SGARs outdoors so long as they are set near a building. Cats and dogs Across 311 responses, FOIs revealed only nine councils with records of accidental or suspected non-target casualties: Cambridge City Council (Apr 2020) - One dog: Injured (secondary poisoning) via rodenticide block bait in a residential garden. East Riding of Yorkshire Council (Feb 2025) - One dog: Injured via bait placed in a burrow on an empty college site property. Eastleigh Borough Council (08/06/2020) - One dog: Released unharmed after exposure to Rodilon Soft Block in a bait station on a housing estate. Greenwich Borough Council (10/05/2023) - One grey squirrel: Dead on inspection in a spring-loaded rat trap (deer enclosure, animal park). Hounslow Borough Council (Jan 2025) - One dog: Unharmed following anticoagulant rat control on a housing estate. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council (Date Unknown) - One dog: Died from rodenticide exposure in a public park. (This was stated by the attending vet, but the council said there was no baiting programme active in the park at the time). South Ribble Borough Council (07/02/2025) - One dog: Received vet treatment (no lasting injury) after consuming Brodifacoum from an unsecured garden bait station. Stroud District Council (May 2026) - One dog: Injured after escaping into a domestic garden and digging up rat bait in a burrow. Wandsworth Borough Council (2024) - Two dogs: Received precautionary treatment and recovered following rodenticide exposure on domestic premises. With the exception of Greenwich Borough Council’s grey squirrel incident, which was due to the related but different issue of spring traps, all recorded cases offered to us by councils involved domestic dogs. There is, of course, a very good reason for that, and the reason also underlines why we know so little about non-target animal harm by council-run or contracted ‘pest control’. Dogs have more of a voice-by-proxy than most other animals by virtue of their social situation. The closeness between dogs and humans, and their living in human households, means that a dog’s actions are more closely scrutinised than most other animals. As a result, they generate council records not because their owners care more, but because of the chain of events a poisoning incident has to pass through before it becomes a recorded complaint. The animal must be seen to fall ill; they must be taken to a vet who identifies anticoagulant poisoning; and crucially, the owner must be able to point to a specific location or object as the likely source. Dogs, typically kept within the boundaries of a house or else walked on leads/within eyesight, pass through all of those gates. When a dog becomes ill in a garden or after a walk, the owner has both the motivation and the means to make a complaint that sticks. This marks them out even from other common domestic animals such as cats, who often roam freely and unsupervised. Should a cat fall ill, identifying a specific location or object as the source of illness is much harder. Without that information, it becomes a lot more difficult to report an incident to the council. The difference between these two widely observed domestic animals makes clear why other creatures may go completely under the radar. It is also the reason why a ‘pest’ controller may say that such data is “undeterminable”. By accident or indifference This “undeterminable” quality isn’t a problem with the ‘pest’ control industry, however. In fact, it’s foundational to how the whole thing works. Rodenticides generally, and SGARs in particular, are designed to kill slowly. A rodent that has taken bait will continue behaving normally for several days before the anticoagulant effect becomes lethal. Because there is no immediate adverse reaction, the rodent doesn't associate the bait with their illness. This mechanism is desirable for ‘pest’ controllers, but it’s also the mechanism that invisibilises harm caused to non-target species. This is why an industry claim that non-target casualties are “undeterminable” isn’t just a neutral technical observation. It expresses the very structure of rodent control, and provides convenient cover for the ‘pest’ control industry. What makes this particularly striking is that the law itself provides a mechanism that should close this gap, yet councils are ignoring it. Even if a council outsources rodent management services to a contractor, it is still responsible for its legal obligations under Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) 3(2). This regulation establishes that what’s considered information held by a public body is not just what’s literally within its paper or digital records, but also any records held on its behalf. As such, a third-party ‘pest’ control company generating treatment logs and job sheets in the course of carrying out a council-commissioned job may be holding that information on the council's behalf, and the council is legally required to retrieve and disclose it if asked. Yet, as multiple councils explicitly told us, they make no requirement for contractors to provide such records. The consequences of this cut both ways. If contractor-held records don't exist, then the monitoring gap is even more complete than the councils' responses suggest, with no data existing anywhere about the impact of publicly-commissioned ‘pest control’ on wildlife. On the other hand, if contractors do hold such data but councils have made no arrangement to access them, that represents widespread failure to comply with the EIR. It means public authorities are commissioning work with known environmental impacts, and structuring the contractual relationship in a way that guarantees they will never know what those impacts are. Either way, the system has been structured by accident or indifference to remain ignorant. Our demand: An immediate end to rodenticide use Protect the Wild is demanding a complete and immediate ban on the use of rodenticide baits. Rodenticides are a threat to our waters: The effect of poor sewage management on the UK’s shorelines and rivers is well known. But rodenticides pose a serious threat too. Sewer baiting needs to be banned: The current protocols for sewer baiting are inadequate to prevent our seas and rivers from being polluted with rodenticide. The practice of sewer baiting needs to stop now. Rodenticides are killing non-target wildlife: Poison bait does not and cannot discriminate between target and non-target species. Killing protected wildlife is a crime. Rodenticides are causing unnecessary suffering: The slow, agonising death inflicted by SGARs – which cause internal bleeding over many days – may itself constitute an offence under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which prohibits the causing of unnecessary suffering to animals. We are already obliged to do better: Existing legislation, as well as the pest control industry’s guidelines, require that preventative methods such as rodent proofing and prevention measures are exhausted before any rodenticide is used. The routine use of poison bait as a first resort by both water companies and local authorities is likely unlawful. Humane solutions are not complicated and there are companies out there who follow an ethical approach to managing wildlife in public areas, including sewers and drains. Check out Humane Wildlife Solutions, for example. As animal rights advocates, we urgently need to step up efforts to stop the silent killing of our wildlife by SGARs and other poisons. We need to make our case loudly and set out the alternatives clearly. The routine use of lethal poisons causes immeasurable suffering and it needs to stop. SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2026 Protect the Wild Protect the Wild, 71-75 Shelton Street Covent Garden, London, W2CH 9JQ Unsubscribe Start writing