Pet owner worried by city’s choice of gopher poison

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This article was published 08/07/2010 (5920 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg pet owner is concerned over the city’s use of a controversial poison to control the gopher population in public parks that are popular hangouts for pet enthusiasts.

Trevor Kirczenow said by the time he noticed a knocked-over warning sign at Westview Park, his dog had already been nosing around in a number of gopher holes treated with the poison Rozol.

Rozol is an anti-coagulant that thins the blood and causes internal bleeding when ingested by rodents, which Kirczenow discovered by online research.

"This information sent me into a panic over the well-being of my dog, but when I called Winnipeg’s 311 line, the operator was unable to tell me anything of how the poison had been applied at the dog park," Kirczenow wrote in a letter to the Free Press.

"There was only one small sign warning of the Rozol application even though there are many possible entrances to the park," he wrote. "Most other dog owners I met had missed the sign altogether."

Kirczenow could not be reached for further comment.

Some U.S. organizations have decried the poison as a cruel way of killing rodents, with potentially deadly side-effects for unsuspecting animals.

Last November, animal rights group Defenders of Wildlife and nature group Audubon of Kansas filed a suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for approving the use of the poison.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is also openly critical of Rozol, arguing there’s evidence the poison is passed down to animals who eat a toxic rodent.

The city says it has been using the provincially approved poison since 2006.

The poison, which comes in either a grain or pellet form, is put into the gopher hole, which is then covered up, said Ken Allen, spokesman for the public works department.

"We’ve had a gopher control program for at least the last 10 years and is something we treat on an annual basis," said Allen. "If a person or child steps in that hole, it can cause broken bones. So if we don’t control the population you’ll see the number of holes increase and the problem exacerbated in the that way."

Lincoln Poulin, general manager of St. Boniface-based Poulin’s Pest Control Services, said if the poison is applied properly there’s only a slight threat to wandering, curious pets.

A small, 10-kilogram dog would have to digest between 10 to 20 kilograms, or 352 ounces, of the poison to be fatal, he said.

"If properly applied, the threat to non-target species is very low," he said. "Applying it right deep down into the burrow reduces the chances that something could happen.

"Being a pet owner myself, if my dog got into some bait, would I be concerned? Absolutely. But if I go to a park and there’s a rotten bologna sandwich on the ground, I wouldn’t want him to eat that either."

Allen couldn’t immediately say where else the poison is being used, but said the gopher problem around Silver Heights Community Centre is particularly bad.

matt.preprost@freepress.mb.ca