This summer, Boston considered taking a new approach to its rodent problem: birth control.
Boston City Council discussed new methods to combat rodent populations in July, and officials took up the conversation again at a city council hearing on Monday. But they said they will not be introducing rat birth control anytime soon, given that a pilot program did not show a downward trend in residents' complaints.
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Under that pilot program, residents in Jamaica Plain's Hyde Square committed to using birth control instead of rat poison. The decline of rat populations in the neighborhood held between 50% and 60%, Alaina Gonzalez-White, a representative of WISDOM Good Works, the organization responsible for the program, said at Monday's meeting.
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But Tania Del Rio, Boston's commissioner of inspectional services, said that data from the city's 311 line showed otherwise — the number of complaints in Hyde Square went up, from 82 in the period in 2023 to 154 complaints in the same period in 2024.
As the program is still in a developmental phase, they are monitoring it as the science develops.
Birth control is not part of the Boston Rat Action Plan which surveys the rat population in Boston's neighborhoods.
