Before I began volunteering at a wildlife rescue in 2021, I didn’t understand how much suffering our society’s rodent-management practices cause. I knew little about what happened after a rat ate poison, or what that meant for the owl who ate the rat. It’s understandable if you don’t, either.
I’m an entrepreneur with twenty-five years in marketing and communications, much of it spent running a consultancy. None of that was particularly useful when I needed to pick up an injured owl beside a road.
As my professional interests shifted toward conservation, I wanted to put my experience to work for wildlife. But I also recognized how little I knew about the animals themselves. If I was going to speak about their lives and the pressures they faced, I needed to spend time learning from the work of caring for them.
At the rescue, that meant going into the field to collect sick and injured animals, assisting with their care in the hospital, cleaning enclosures, preparing specialized diets, and, when rehabilitation succeeded, taking animals back to the wild.
Many of the hawks and owls we cared for were suffering from rodenticide poisoning. They were the animals someone had noticed, reported, and helped bring into care. Others never reach a rescue hospital.
My experience with one particular red-shouldered hawk has influenced me greatly.
I was called out on a rescue with a fishing net, welding gloves, and a dog crate on hand (the tools of the trade!) to find and capture a hawk. I found them standing on the grounds of a sprawling apartment complex, beside the dumpster. They were lethargic, disoriented, and motionless. I just walked right up and scooped them up in a towel. No dramatic rescue required.
Back at the hospital, I held the hawk in my hands as the technician prepared treatment. Lying on their back, eyes closed and barely conscious, the hawk called out. If you haven’t heard a red-shouldered hawk before, it’s this.
The call I heard that day was different: a single sustained tone, primal, powerful, and a profound account of suffering. It traveled through my hands and my body and filled the small hospital room. The call was thick and resonant, almost as though it were moving through water.
The hawk recovered. Later, I had the privilege of transporting them back for release at the place where I had found them. Their home was that apartment complex, among the parking spaces, buildings, and people going about their lives.
I was grateful to see them go. But helping an animal recover cannot, by itself, remove the risks they return to. That tension has stayed with me: we can put extraordinary care into saving one animal while the practices that endanger animals continue around us.
Rodenticides are poisons used to kill rodents. There are several kinds, with different mechanisms and risks. Anticoagulant rodenticides interfere with the body’s ability to recycle vitamin K, which is necessary to produce blood-clotting factors. As those factors become depleted, an animal can develop uncontrolled internal bleeding. Second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, often shortened to SGARs, can deliver a lethal dose in a single feeding and persist in animal tissues. First-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (FGARs) also cause harm and carry secondary-poisoning risks. National Pesticide Information Center
A lethal feeding does not mean a quick death. A review of studies in captive rodents reported that visible illness generally began three to four days after consuming anticoagulant bait, with death typically occurring six to nine days after the first ingestion. The research describes prolonged illness, impaired movement, bleeding, and injuries capable of causing severe pain. Fisher and colleagues, 2019
The same bait can also poison a predator or scavenger who eats a contaminated animal. This is secondary poisoning, and it carries the harm beyond the rodents targeted and the place where the bait was laid. National Pesticide Information Center
Hawks and owls are among the many species exposed. California’s wildlife monitoring has detected anticoagulant rodenticides in foxes, coyotes, raccoons, bobcats, mountain lions, and river otters. Detection does not automatically establish that poisoning caused an animal’s death, but it shows how widely these chemicals are reaching wildlife. California Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2024 monitoring report
In Washington, researchers tested samples from 24 mountain lions and four bobcats on the Olympic Peninsula. They detected at least one anticoagulant rodenticide in 68% of those animals, including both first- and second-generation compounds. The study does not tell us how common exposure is across all wild cats in the region. Yovovich and colleagues, 2024
Rodenticide exposure adds to the many pressures wildlife already face. WWF’s 2026 Living Planet Report describes a 73% average decline in the size of monitored vertebrate wildlife populations between 1970 and 2022. Caveats: This measures changes in monitored populations, not the proportion of all animals lost, and it does not isolate the effects of rodenticides.
Wildlife already face multiple pressures; changing how we manage rodents can reduce one source of harm.
Reducing reliance on these poisons means making effective alternatives practical for the people who need them. Research is expanding the available options, but new technologies take time to develop and validate. In every setting, effective rodent management requires a combination of approaches: prevention, exclusion, monitoring, and targeted interventions, supported by skilled technicians and ongoing maintenance. UC Integrated Pest Management
I’m building Rodent Management Exchange to reduce animal suffering and ecological harm caused by rodent management while enabling effective control. We aim to help people adapt their practices through informed choices and practical support.