By Lisa Kava
On Sat Feb 12, a neighborhood resident was walking her dog in Riverside Park when she noticed what appeared to be green blocks of exposed rat poison along the inside wall of the park between 83rd and 85th Streets. She posted the following in the Upper West Side Together Facebook group with the above photo.
“PSA for dog owners:
Riverside Park: there looks to be many, many chunks of green rat poison strewn along the Riverside Drive wall inside the park from around 83rd to 85th street. I walk my dog there on-leash but I know in mornings many dogs are off-leash there.”
Rat poison is extremely dangerous to dogs and requires immediate medical attention if ingested.
https://www.vets-now.com/pet-care-advice/dog-ate-rat-poison/
West Side Rag reached out to the Parks Department, Riverside Park Conservancy, and Council Member Gale Brewer’s office. We received the following response from the Parks Department:
“This rat poison was not placed by Parks. Our crews are investigating and will remove any exposed rat poison that they find.”
This story will be updated when we have more information.
Update: On Monday February 14th, the Parks Department wrote to WSR in an email: “Our crews inspected and cleaned the site yesterday. We do not know who placed the bricks there, but we will continue to monitor.”
This appears to be Tomkat bait blocks. This product is not a professional product and is available in stores like Home Depot, etc. Bait blocks of any kind must be inside Tamper proof bait stations or in some circumstances delivered directly into a burrow, legally.
Whoa. I walk my dog there too. Thanks for the heads up.
Thank you for your sharp eyes and reporting, and for contacting Gale, Brewer, Park’s dept and RP Conservancy.And for letting us know, especially dog owners. There’s actually more and more of an established path there, closer to the wall.
Even if bait is Tomkat just because it is sold at Home Depot, hardware stores or other such places does not in of itself mean it isn’t effective, nor dangerous to pets.
TomKat, Contrac and many other bait block all have similar looks.
https://www.marvistavet.com/rat-poison-bromethalin-based-rodenticide.pml
https://www.amazon.com/4×4-Contrac-Blox-Mice-Bait/dp/B002Y1ZE9A
Thing about TomKat is it contains Bromethalin a slow acting non anticoagulant poison for which there is no known antidote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromethalin
This morning I saw two additional blocks placed in the tree boxes on 85th street between west end and riverside (closer to riverside).
Vigilant pest control! Rather than declaring innocence from placing an obviously dangerous poison in the parks, NYC govt needs to understand the impact that rats are having on the quality of our lives. Rats are everywhere! Why isn’t anything serious being done to make our parks and streets safe?
I garden in RSP on 83rd street and have had this problem for 1 1/2 years. The cubes were pink then. One afternoon, I picked up over a 100 in my area and about 50 on the Mt Tom area. The person throws in rat poison every 2 weeks. I told the parks department but unfortunately, nothing was done at the time. Now that the poison is spreading beyond the fenced areas, this is finally getting the attention it needs. The person has to know that he or she could be in serious trouble for potentially poisoning dogs, sparrow and squirrels.