It is important for food-safety reasons to manage rats in school and community gardens. Rats and other wildlife can carry a number of diseases that can be deposited in the form of urine and feces on fruit, vegetables, and in the soil. Rats can also directly damage fruit and vegetables by consuming the produce entirely or by gnawing on parts of it and making it unfit for human consumption. Norway rats create burrows that can compromise beds and root systems. While rats can also chew on drip irrigation and damage the tubes, it is more common for some other wildlife species to chew on these.

Managing rodents in and around school and community gardens can be difficult. One of the easiest ways to keep many rodents at bay is to remove...

Rodenticides continue to come under scrutiny in California due to issues surrounding the potential for nontarget injury to wildlife and pets. While California already has the strictest rodenticide laws and regulations in the country, there have been recent calls to ban all rodenticide applications in the state. Several Assembly Bills (AB 2596, AB 1687, and AB 2422) have been introduced proposing either bans or major restrictions on rodenticide applications.

Anticoagulant rodenticides have been detected in many species of wildlife worldwide; yet the origins, exposure pathways, and effects of these exposures are not well understood. The origins of these rodenticide exposures from point of application to point of...

[From the May 2017 issue of the UC IPM Retail Newsletter]

Keeping backyard chickens is becoming increasingly popular in residential areas around California. Your store may be selling pre-made chicken coops, feed, or other accessories, or you may be getting questions about rodent pests in chicken houses.

Chicken coops are sometimes associated with mild to serious rodent infestations. Rodents, such as rats and house mice, are not only predators of chickens and eggs, they can carry and transmit many diseases to both chickens and humans. For rodents, as well as most pests in and around the home and garden,...

[From the April 2015 issue of the UC IPM Retail Newsletter]

Norway and roof rats, as well as house mice, can be commonly found in urban and rural homes. Many rodents, particularly house mice, enter structures during the winter months. Rats (Figure 1) and mice (Figure 2) can cause damage resulting in large economic losses and are also known to pose health risks to people.

With the implementation of recent legislation nationwide restrictions on rodenticide use have become much tighter. In California, pesticides registered for use against...