Harvard Law Animal Law and Policy Clinic Issues Press Release re: Bald Eagles

Harvard Law Animal Law and Policy Clinic recently issued a press release re: the bald eagle deaths and the need for MDAR to take action.  Here is an excerpt from the press release:

It has been two years since the coalition formally requested that the Massachusetts Department of
Agricultural Resources (MDAR) end the use of toxic rodenticides statewide. Anticoagulant
rodenticides (ARs), including both first (FGARs) and second (SGARs) generation, are widely used
in Massachusetts by pest control companies in an attempt to control rat and mouse populations.
These poisons can cause fatal internal bleeding — a process that can take days to weeks. Because
ARs accumulate in tissue and persist long after a rodent consumes them, any animal who eats a
poisoned rodent—including protected bald eagles—are at serious risk of poisoning as well.

The Natick and Arlington bald eagles are just two of many examples of Massachusetts wildlife
poisoned in recent years. Yet at a recent MDAR Pesticide Board Subcommittee meeting, committee
members made no mention of these wildlife deaths. Instead, they appeared eager to return to
“business as usual” and continue to rely on ineffective poisons to manage rodent populations.

“If we’ve already lost two bald eagles in six months within a small geographic area, imagine how
much more of our environment has been poisoned by anticoagulant rodenticides,” said Clinic
Director Mary Hollingsworth. 

To read the complete press release, go here.

Photo credit: Patty Sears-Joyce