After years of hard-fought battle, town might lastly be getting into an period of rat concord — or nearer to it.
Newly elected Councilmember Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan) lately launched a invoice to outlaw the sale of glue traps geared toward mice and rats within the metropolis. The traps are small boards lined with an adhesive that ensnares the critters.
Animal-rights advocates argue that the traps are inhumane, as they trigger a gradual demise for trapped rodents, and might be unsafe for pets and youngsters.
“The best way glue traps work is dangerous not simply to the animals however to household pets and society at massive,” Epstein mentioned.
The lawmaker, whose district spans the East Village and the Decrease East Facet, launched an analogous invoice throughout his seven years as a state assemblymember in Albany.
The decision for mercy towards rats comes at a time of heightened contempt for town’s most reviled rodents.
Vigilantes and even canines hunt for rats by night time. Mayor Eric Adams famously declared a “struggle on rats,” then appointed a “rat czar” to fight the scourge. He instituted a coverage of filling rat burrows with carbon monoxide. As a mayoral candidate, Curtis Sliwa referred to as for feral “cat colonies” to catch them.
Adams’ efforts made one thing of a dent on town’s rat inhabitants, information exhibits.
The containerization of trash and implementation of a composting program contributed to a 20% decline in rat sightings from 2024 to 2025, based on the Division of Sanitation and information on 311 calls.
Rat Race to the Backside
New Yorkers have coexisted with rats for hundreds of years, however the relationship has all the time been fraught. Within the combat, rats have numbers on their aspect; based on the e-book “Rats: Observations on the Historical past and Habitat of the Metropolis’s Most Undesirable Inhabitants,” one pair of the four-legged creatures has the potential to create “15,000 descendants in a yr.”
But, Epstein argues that town ought to implement much less violent strategies to maintain the rats at bay, comparable to containerization and sealing holes in flats.
“I believe what we’ll do is cut back the inhabitants,” he mentioned. “We’ll coexist with them like we coexist with different wildlife.”
One other sponsor of the invoice, Councilmember Farah Louis (D-Brooklyn), mentioned she is extra involved with glue traps being dangers to people and pets.
“Typically kids or pets get caught within the entice,” she mentioned. “That’s the explanation why I supported the invoice.”
Animal rights teams comparable to PETA hailed the invoice’s introduction, whereas a spokesperson for Voters for Animal Rights referred to as glue traps merciless and ineffective.
“It’s slowly rising as a motion,” spokesperson Laura Tartaglia mentioned, noting a pattern of jurisdictions, comparable to Ulster County, forbidding the sale of the controversial adhesive boards or contemplating doing so. “I believe individuals see that that is simply unethical.”
Even skilled rodent killers see the entice as a sticky wicket. Gene Miller, proprietor of Broadway Pest Companies in Midtown agreed that utilizing them is merciless.
“As soon as a mouse is caught on a glue board, they principally die of hunger,” Miller mentioned. “I’m the proprietor of this firm and I don’t agree. I believe it’s dangerous.”
Miller additionally doesn’t discover the traps very efficient.
“If we put out a whole lot of traps,” the exterminator mentioned, “we’d solely catch just a few [rodents].”
Miller nonetheless sells glue boards, although. He mentioned his clients wish to see them as a result of they offer the looks of a no-holds-barred strategy. So each pest management service makes use of them, making a rat race to the underside.
“If different firms are going to make use of glue boards and I’m not, then I’ve to elucidate to my shoppers why.”
Nonetheless, some New Yorkers see the glue entice as a useful gizmo for capturing rodents who sneak of their properties. Cathy Friedman has deployed the boards inside her Windsor Terrace residence for years, catching a number of mice alongside the best way. Although she has blended emotions concerning the traps’ morality, Friedman’s bodily revulsion towards rodents outweighed her concern.
“I might throw up if I noticed one,” Friedman mentioned concerning the mice who usually snuck in from her yard. “So it was a matter of whether or not I removed them or whether or not I used to be bodily sick fascinated with my kitchen.”
