75 years of Alberta's mission to keep rats at bay
CBC
Twice a year, a patrol team scrutinizes barns, straw bales and grain storage bins along a 600-kilometre stretch of the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary. They're looking for rats, continuing a 75-year mission to stop the rodents from making themselves at home in the province.
"My grandfather," says Lincoln Poulin, the president of Poulin's Pest Control, "was known as the man that killed 10 million rats."
Napoleon Poulin invented a rodenticide called Poulin's Rat Doom and was a key figure in the early days of Alberta's rat control program, established in 1950 after Norway rats were discovered on an Alberta farm.
The rodents, thought to originate in China, first arrived on the east coast of North America in 1775 and gradually spread west, travelling about 24 kilometres per year and arriving in Saskatchewan in the 1920s.
By 1959, the number of infestations in Alberta increased to 573. But after 1959, they plummeted, reaching zero by 2003, according to the Alberta government.
Karen Wickerson, pest specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation, administers the Alberta Rat Control Program — meaning she's known in some circles as Alberta's rat lady.
If a rat is found, the patrol sets up traps, bait stations and cameras. The goal is to get the rodents before they start a family and spread, said Wickerson.
The rat control zone stretches along Alberta's eastern boundary between Cold Lake, Alta., to the U.S. border with Montana.
The patrol's focus is on eastern Alberta because it's hard for rats to get over the mountains in the west, Montana has a very low rat population in the south and the north is too cold and sparsely populated, said Wickerson.
While there are occasional outbreaks — like the 2023 outbreaks at two recycling plants in Calgary — they're rare.
Usually, rats come into Alberta by chance.
"They can be hitchhikers on a shipment of grain," said Shelby Oracheski, agricultural fieldman with the Municipal District of Wainwright, which is about 50 kilometres west of the Saskatchewan boundary.
"With any invasive species, the earlier you detect them, the more effective you can be to get rid of them."
Bryan Skinner's family started their mixed grain and beef farm in 1950 — the same year Alberta's rat program got started — near the village of Chauvin, about 10 kilometres west of the Saskatchewan boundary.
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