Our children do, and they’re taking on Bunnings to save owls, Jamie Madden reports

After years of drought, the wetter La Niña climate cycle brings with it a boom in insects, birds, rats and other animals who breed up and gorge on the abundance a warm, wet year provides. In most cases this is a win for nature and a chance to claw back numbers of rare and endangered animals along the Escarpment. However, when an explosion of rodents collides with suburbia and a well-stocked hardware megastore, it has proven deadly for some of our most precious wildlife.

In the past 12 months there has been a huge increase in black and brown rats in the Northern Illawarra. Both are introduced species, known for their hardiness through bust years and ability to populate and spread quickly in boom years. While our local rat ‘plague’ hasn’t been anything like the mice plague of western NSW, local social media has been filled with people lamenting their sudden abundance, and asking how to get rid of them. 

Understandably, most people travel to their nearest Bunnings and look for the fastest acting, best rat poison available. Even locally, the rat problem has been so bad that Bunnings was often completely sold out of rat poison, leaving bare shelves reminiscent of the great toilet paper crisis of 2020. 

The problem is, the newest rat poisons are not only extremely effective at killing rats, but have devastating collateral impacts. 

Five weeks ago, my kids found the body of a sooty owl near our chook pen. 

This was a tragedy. Sooty owls are one of the rarest owls in Australia and are a stunningly beautiful stealth hunter of rodents on the rainforest floor. Mostly they live nowhere near humans, but in the Northern Illawarra we have rainforest, and sooty owls, literally at our back door. 

The owl was exquisite, its feathers perfect and its body robust and healthy, but its tightly clenched claws and a small trail of vomit suggested something sinister had occurred. We called WIRES who collected the body and sent the liver for analysis as part of BirdLife Australia’s effort to understand the impact of a new type of rat poisons, Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides (SGARs). 

A few weeks later, the devastating news arrived – our sooty owl had indeed died needlessly via ingesting poisoned rats. He was a male, we discovered, and otherwise as healthy as he looked. We heard his mate calling for him for a few nights, but then… nothing…

How does rat poison kill owls? 

All rat poisons kill rats by stopping their blood from clotting. However, particularly with SGARs, this process can take some time. Rats and mice walk around for up to three days laden with poison. These “Walking Dead” rodents are easy targets for owls, the poison then builds up in the owls. 

Owls either die outright, or become so sick and impaired that they injure themselves and bleed out, or starve to death. And while we hadn’t used rat poison, owls will travel many kilometres in a night foraging for food. 

We quickly discovered our dead sooty owl was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Days later, a dead tawny frogmouth was reported on the Thirroul Living Facebook page. Now knowing what we did, we raced to collect the body so it could also be autopsied. 

Sadly, it was one of many tawny frogmouths, powerful owls and even possums that WIRES expects have been poisoned by SGARs in the Northern Illawarra over recent months. 

Our kids were shocked that this could happen and that owls were dying. They didn’t understand how this poison could be sold so freely. 

So, they decided to do something about it. Each one wrote a letter to Bunnings asking them to remove these deadly SGAR poisons from sale. 

Their story has been shared thousands of times on social media and used by BirdLife Australia to help promote their concern about SGARs – with 37 out of 38 powerful owls recently autopsied having poison in their bodies. 

Bunnings eventually wrote back informing us that they are in the process of separating the products on their shelves and working with producers to improve warning labels. 

However, the kids are not satisfied that this will be enough. They are asking everyone to sign the BirdLife Australia petition asking Bunnings to totally remove these owl-killing poisons from their shelves. The kids think everyone would do better if they only knew they had killed our sooty owl. 

“People don’t know they are killing owls because the bad poisons are on the shelf with the other ones,” said Monty.

All the kids love a trip to Bunnings, but now they run to the rat poison shelves to see if there has been any change. So far, they have seen nothing.

Monty says: “We will not stop until they stop selling the poisons that kill owls.” 

READ IT AND ACT:

Sign the petition to Bunnings at www.actforbirds.org/ratpoison

Save owls & safely manage rats: www.actforbirds.org/what-else-can-you-do

Help our owls and keep rats in check

Second Generation Rat poisons – including Talon, Fast Action RatSak and The Big Cheese Fast Action brand – have been banned from general public sale in the US, Canada and the EU, but are sadly available to purchase from Bunnings and other retailers. Thankfully there are lots of ways to minimise the risk to owls.

Reduce dependence on poison baits:

• Consider other, non-poisonous pest control, like snap traps and only put out baits when you have too.

• Do not use and tell your pest controller not to use any products that contain SGARs.

• Read labels on any poisons. Only use first generation anticoagulant rodenticides with “better choice” ingredients – Warfarin (Ratsak Double-strength) and Coumatetralyl (Racumin) or natural constituents like Sodium Chloride (Ratsak Natural). 

• If you have SGARs, return them or dispose of them safely.

Make your house and garden less friendly for rodents:

• Seal potential roof/wall cavity access points that rodents might be using

• Pick up any fallen fruit, & ensure excess pet food isn’t accessible;

• Rodent-proof chook pens and aviaries;

• Tidy up garden waste and limit access to compost heaps