Great read. I didn't know how exactly the rats were eradicated from Alberta something I have just heard and taken for granted. Reading the article provided a great overview of how much effort it really took to do it.
I would like to mention that, even though Alberta is rat free, we still have mice that can make your life misreble if they somehow enter your house/office.
this is out of date information unfortunately. With warming climate, the black-legged tick has spread into Alberta and samples have been found with the Lyme disease bacterium.
> But it was easy to prove warfarin was safe: a pest control officer held a series of local meetings where he ate warfarin-treated rolled oats while discussing rat control.
Got to love those live demos. Eating rat poison in front of the audience to prove it is safe!
Around here the coyotes eat mice. I'll see a golf ball size blob of crushed bones and fur on the driveway now and then.
A few years ago, a coyote mom with her 5 pups set up shop on my front lawn. She'd keep a weather eye on me, and me on her, and we got along fine. Over the summer, the number of pups dwindled. I saw a severed head of one a ways away, I think it was done by an eagle. I think only 2 survived the summer.
I sometimes see 6 eagles at a time circling overhead. One flew by so close I could have touched its wingtip. Wow!
A bobcat lives nearby. I see his tracks in the snow, and saw him a couple times.
I live well within the Seattle metropolitan area. Isn't it amazing?
This inevitably brings us to the story of the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone, and how they eat the deer which brings back a whole new slew of changes.
Not to be downer, but recent studies have not corroborated those effects.
>One of the most celebrated claims about Yellowstone’s wolves is facing a major challenge. Scientists say the study behind the famous trophic cascade story relied on flawed methods that overstated the ecological impact of wolf recovery. Their reanalysis found no evidence for a dramatic, park-wide surge in willow growth. Instead, the effects appear smaller and vary from place to place.
Is there a word for a popular misconception that nonetheless produces a positive result? The understanding by the public of the effects could be completely wrong, but the reintroduction of wolves and the restoration of Yellowstone are still good things.
Here in Boise Idaho, we are watching the local governments completely fail. We've not had rats here until somewhat recently. The State, County, and cities have all taken a "not our problem" attitude to it and instead of putting in any sort of pest management/eradication programs they've basically just said "good luck everyone".
The Freakonomics podcast did a series on rats and their relationship to cities and humans and talked about Alberta's approach—it was really fascinating, I'd recommend it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sympathy-for-the-rat
Every so often I'll mention online that Alberta has no rats, and inevitably there will be an American responding in absolute disbelief saying I'm full of shit.
I may not live in Alberta, but luckily rats aren't really a thing in my neck of the woods. Travel an hour down the highway and it's a different story.
Also, as an aside, people often don't believe me when I say I've never seen a cockroach before in my life. Not a one. I've seen pictures of em, and I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those things irl I would absolutely shit myself.
"Alberta has no rats" is a bit of a simplification, as the linked article goes into in depth. They do find rat investations (typically) in the border zones, and some sneak through, both wild and domesticated. Due to ongoing management though the statement is true in broad strokes. We have lots of mice and all sorts of ground squirrels (including a ridiculously awesome "museum") but thankfully very few rats.
Canada's shipping ports have had rat infestations for hundreds of years, even up the Great Lakes. DNA studies show that once a local population became established long ago, it defended itself repeatedly from incursions, and carries on. Alberta has no sea ports, so rats hitch rides there on trains, trucks, and in packaging. The scale is much, much smaller, so Alberta is somewhat able to eradicate them.
I spent the first half of my life in Alberta; had never seen a rat nor a cockroach. I moved further east in the country, cockroaches in my first apartment the first week there... and then discovered rats near the waterfront within the month.
My dad and uncles lived near the southern border as kids, would hunt rats by the train station/grain elevator with a .22 back in the 50's & 60's.
> I've seen pictures of em, and I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those things irl I would absolutely shit myself.
I always thought this was interesting (how many people are super scared of cockroaches). I'm absolutely terrified of bugs, I see cockroaches very rarely, and while I wouldn't pet one... They're not too bad? There's tons of bugs that are way scarier. Spiders, house centipedes, camel crickets. And that's just the stuff that actually exists near me. If I encountered an average Australian insect, good God, I'd run screaming. But cockroaches? Eh
I assume it's because cockroaches are associated with filth, and they tend to occur in large numbers. But as individual bugs, on the surface level they're not too bad. (Not "disagreeing" or anything, just think the different perspectives are neat)
I'm aware, I don't kill spiders if I can avoid it. And I know cockroaches are nastier. I just think it's surprising that people are so visually afraid of them, since they're not a very scary-looking bug.
Growing up poor, cock roaches symbolize poverty and the run down sad places I used to live in. I can’t stand them as they bring back bad memories of my childhood.
For me it's less fear than an instant "I must kill it / get it out of here" feeling. A big spider or centipede gives me a more intense "creepy crawly" shiver but a cockroach is way higher on the disgust scale for some reason.
isn't it kind of moot? there are plenty of other rodents. They fill the gap left by rats. I'm not really sure eliminating all rodents would be a good idea for the ecosystem.
Rats are, to my knowledge, more destructive and spread more disease. Obviously eliminating all rodents would be disastrous for the ecosystem, but rats in particular are an invasive species in North America so eliminating them specifically doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
> Also, as an aside, people often don't believe me when I say I've never seen a cockroach
That one is pretty shocking. When I lived in South Carolina I remember I used to walk this one road late at night. Once it was dark enough I could see them scattering underneath the streetlights on the fucking sidewalk. Reminded me of sidewalk lizards in Florida, but grosser. I live in the Midwest now. I’m just glad they’re smaller here and don’t fly.
Alberta of course has rats. Short of being a hermit nation with impassable borders, the alternative is impossible.
But they maintain such a critically low number through aggressive, non-stop actions that we declare it "rat free", though that's a misnomer. Similar to the measles free status doesn't actually mean measles free, but rather that it isn't spreading uncontrolled.
Though as someone who lives in Ontario, I just wanted to add that I've never seen a vermin rat in my life in this province. Not in Toronto or its subways, not on its streets, nor in various other cities throughout the province. I've seen mice, of course, but never rats. I know they exist here, but someone having not experienced them doesn't mean much.
But wild rats are rare. Albertans have grown so unaccustomed to rats that they frequently mistake squirrels, gophers, and other small animals for them: of the 875 reported sightings in 2025, only 47 turned out to be actual rats.
I lived in Chinatown in Toronto (College and Spadina) and I saw a rat the size of a cat running around the inside of a Chinese supermarket around 2am when I was walking around at night during my university years. I also saw smaller rats and roaches running around Chinese restaurants as well.
Alberta has shown us that proper policy incentives can drive meaningful change. Instead of leaving rats to languish in cellars, they created incentives for them to do meaningful work in the provincial government instead.