Alberta's image as world's only rat-free region shattered by discovery of rat

A dead rat was found in the town of Bowden, Alberta, prompting the province’s Rat Patrol to investigate and a public appeal to report droppings or sightings. Alberta has long marketed itself as one of the few large rat-free regions, a status bolstered since 1950 by an intensive Rat Control Program and by geography - mountain ranges and boreal forest that officials say limit Norway rats, which struggle to overwinter in cultivated fields. Global rat populations have surged with warming cities: researchers cited increases of 390% in Washington DC, 300% in San Francisco, 162% in New York and 186% in Toronto over the past decade, underlining why a single discovery alarms authorities even if Bowden’s notice did not specify where the specimen was found.

Alberta’s historic defenses include a long-standing “rat control zone” roughly 373 miles by 18 miles (600 km by 30 km) along the Saskatchewan border, mandatory eradication under the Agricultural Pests Act, wartime-style public campaigns and a radio show, plus a legacy of harsh measures such as applying about 140,000 lb of 73% arsenic trioxide to thousands of buildings and farms in 1952-53. Today a hotline and email collect hundreds of reports yearly, most misidentifications (muskrats, voles, field mice), and officials stress that “rat-free” means no resident breeding population rather than an absolute absence of sightings.