04/22/2026
HAPPY EARTH DAY!
Earth Day 2026 has special meaning for the State of Connecticut and especially for the town of Newtown, Connecticut. On Monday, April 20, 2026, on a vote from the Newtown Conservation Commission, the Newtown Connecticut Board of Selectmen voted to ban the use of 2nd generation rodenticides SGARs, better known as rat poison, on town property.
Newtown is the first town in the state of Connecticut to ban the use of Second-Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides on town property.
Originally formulated to kill to kill rodents - rats and mice, squirrels, chipmunks, and other small mammals, Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides, SGARs also kills Connecticut’s hawks, owls, falcons, and other raptors and their offspring at an alarming rate. A mother owl will hunt small rodents, rats and mice, the prime food source of most raptors, to feed her baby owlets. A rodenticide-poisoned mouse will kill the baby chick in an excruciating manner. SGARs are anti-coagulants; the babies and whatever raptor or mammal consumes the rodents, will bleed out from the inside, a slow, painful death.
It doesn’t end there! Poisoned rodents move onto the neighboring red tail hawk family, the kestrel family and even the magnificent eagle soaring overhead and her babies. All wildlife whose diet consists of rodents – fox, coyotes, bobcats, etc. can die that excruciating death from 2nd Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides. And the effects of SGARs continue down the food chain causing irreparable damage to wildlife’s immune systems allowing infections like mange to flourish. If your pets go outside, your pets, and even your children, are not safe from serious injury.
The fight to ban these poisons continues. If you place poison bait boxes on your property, a common choice of pest removal companies, you may be responsible for killing that beautiful barn owl, her mate - and her babies and any wildlife that passes through your property.
Consider that the same mating pair of barn owls can dispatch over 1000 rodents in each mating season. Isn’t hanging a barn owl nest box the better option? Instead of paying $25 for a black poison bait box, trash that bait box and spend that $25 for a barn owl nesting box and save lots of wildlife in the process.
To learn about the whole sordid food chain tragedy for birds of prey and other wildlife poisoned by rodenticides, check out https://www.aplacecalledhoperaptors.com/ and https://friendsofanimals.org/ to follow their exceptional work on behalf of Connecticut’s birds of prey. And for restrictions in other states, please go to https://www.jteaton.com/rodenticide-state-restrictions/
