New York City's "rat war" is killing more than rats.

The city's primary rodent control strategy relies on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) — poisons that stop a rat's blood from clotting, causing them to bleed internally for days before they die. During that time, a poisoned, slow-moving rat is easy prey. Hawks, owls, and other predators eat these rats and are poisoned in turn.

The numbers make the scale of this clear: according to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation's Wildlife Unit, 84% of dead birds of prey found in New York City tested positive for anticoagulant rat poison. Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who became a symbol of the city after his escape from the Central Park Zoo, had four different rodenticides in his system when he died — on top of a virus contracted from eating poisoned pigeons.

Meanwhile, the rat population these poisons are meant to control hasn't meaningfully declined. NYC remains home to an estimated 3 million rats. We're poisoning an entire food web for a strategy that isn't working.

We call on the City to:

1. Restrict the use of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides on city property and in city-run pest control programs, in line with restrictions already adopted in California and other jurisdictions.
2. Invest in non-toxic, evidence-based rodent control — rodent-proof trash containerization, sealed composting, and habitat modification — over chemical poisons.
3. Require public disclosure of where and when rodenticides are deployed on city property, so residents and wildlife advocates can track impact.
4. Support birds of prey as a natural, non-toxic form of rodent control rather than poisoning the very predators that help keep rat populations in check.

New York City doesn't have to choose between managing its rat population and protecting its wildlife. But it does have to choose better tools than poison that moves up the food chain and kills the animals working against the problem for free.

Sign this petition to tell NYC lawmakers: stop poisoning hawks, owls, and other wildlife in a rat war that isn't even working.