This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

Thanks to your support, AB 1788 to ban rodenticide poisons in California has passed key policy committees and is headed to the full Assembly for a final vote. We need your help now to stop pest control operators, who are gearing up to oppose this bill! We can’t let them win the battle over California’s wild animals!

Our sources say LiphaTech, a major manufacturer of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, sent at least two top executives from Dallas to the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee hearing in California on April 9. Other service companies came en masse and announced opposition to AB 1788. During the hearing, Sacramento hotels were full of pesticide manufacturers and operators.

Pest control operators know that if AB 1788 passes, they can’t use cruel “black boxes” to lure unsuspecting rodents inside to ingest deadly rodenticide poisons. Mice, rats, and other small mammals leave the boxes and become prey to owls, hawks, coyotes, and bobcats, who in turn become sick and die from a build-up of these deadly rodenticide poisons.

These poisons are endangering threatened species like northern spotted owls, San Joaquin kit foxes, and Pacific fishers. New scientific studies published in 2018 by UC Davis, the California Academy of Sciences, and others show that 70 percent of Northern spotted owls have been contaminated with anticoagulant rodenticides. A separate 2018 UCLA study found that these poisons affect genes regulating bobcat immune systems.

Although California banned the consumer purchase and use of these deadly black boxes, commercial pesticide companies continue to use them due to a loophole in previous legislation. Since most people hire pest control companies to kill mice, rats, and ground squirrels, the original ban did not protect the initial rodents, nor the secondary predatory animals from being poisoned to death.

This bill would ban second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) throughout California, comprising the most toxic, “one-feeding kills” poisons, and additionally ban all first-generation anticoagulants (FGARs) on state-owned properties.

Let’s join forces with Poison Free Malibu and animal activists to close this deadly loophole and ban rodenticide poisons in California for good!

This image shows how rodent poisons kill many predatory animals.

This video demonstrates how pesticide companies are to blame for high predator mortality.

What You Can Do:

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.