RESOURCES: Your Voice Needed to Prevent Secondary Poisoning of Wildlife! 

Resources: Sample Letter to the EPA (Word format) Sample Letter to the EPA (PDF format) EPA notice about proposed mitigation to prevent wildlife and children from secondary rodenticide poisoning Article in the San Francisco Chronicle about poisoned hawks in Golden Gate Park "Sickened Hawk Flies Again" - video footage of the same story San Francisco Rescued Orphaned Mammal Program (SF ROMP)

The Situation:

We currently have chance to stop the poisoning of our nation's wildlife - by sending letters to the EPA.

Second generation ("single-feed") rodenticides are designed to provide a lethal dose to rodents in a single bite. However, because the poison takes up to a week to kill the rodents, they often feed multiple times. The result is that rodents become so toxic that they kill the wildlife that eat them.

The recent case of a Red-Shouldered Hawk that was poisoned in Golden Gate Park has brought much needed media attention to this issue. In San Francisco, media coverage about hawks dying from eating poisoned rodents brought about an immediate, but temporary ban on the use of the single-feed rodent poisons being used outdoors.

The EPA has laboratory documentation that eagles, hawks, falcons, fox, mountain lions, and all other species that eat rodents and carrion are dying from eating rodents poisoned with single-feed rodenticides. The EPA document (link here) lists a variety of endangered species that have died from eating rodents poisoned with these poisons.

Please send the sample letter  below to the EPA, or write a letter of your own. Tell the EPA that killing endangered species and other non-target wildlife for the sake of killing rodents just doesn't make sense. Wildlife rehabilitators are in a unique position to be able to provide the EPA with numbers, statistics and stories of secondary poisoning cases in rehabilitation. Please be sure to include in your letter any information about poisoned wildlife you have received.

Urge the EPA to protect our wildlife from secondary poisoning by prohibiting "single-feed" rodenticides from being used outdoors where wildlife are at risk of eating poisoned rodents.

The CCWR Board