There are certain benefits to living in Northern Ontario that are difficult to quantify. For many of us, access to nature and the abundance of wildlife rank pretty high on the list.
People move to Thunder Bay expecting a little wildness. We live at the edge of the boreal forest, after all. When locals post pictures of bears traipsing through their yards, it is often with considerably more appreciation than alarm. We love our foxes and deer. And the coyotes, lynx, and wolves have plenty admirers. Great horned owls, tiny northern saw-whet owls, eagles and hawks provide a diversity of bird life that would make people in many cities envious.
There is something remarkable about living in a place where all of this still exists alongside us.
One might therefore assume that a city surrounded by so much wildlife would be particularly enlightened about protecting it. One might even assume that people fortunate enough to live among all these creatures would possess some inherent understanding that the land and everything upon it is sacred, and that being a good steward requires considerably more than enjoying a fox photograph on Facebook.
One might assume a lot of things.
Thunder Bay is also home to something especially remarkable: the Gray Fox, a species listed as Threatened under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act. Ontario identifies northwestern Ontario, specifically the Thunder Bay – Rainy River region, as one of the few areas in Canada with evidence of Gray Fox breeding. The provincial government estimates there are fewer than 250 mature Gray Foxes in Ontario.
And among the foods these rare little predators eat?
Small rodents.
Keep that in the back of your mind.
I moved to Current River in 2019 because of the beauty and peace I found here. Tucked against the northern edge of Thunder Bay, the neighbourhood has always felt a little different from the rest of the city. There is a little more space. A little more wilderness. A little more peace.
At least for now.
Read more: The Land is Available. But the Park is Easier.
The Boulevard Lake greenspace complex runs through this part of the city. Natural and paved trails wind through the Arundel parkland and connect with the accessible trails around Boulevard Lake. Across Arundel Street sits Centennial Park, and wildlife doesn’t recognize the lines we draw on municipal maps between one parcel of greenspace and another.
My pups and I are frequent walkers of all of it.
Several days ago, we were out for an early morning hike through Centennial. The dogs and I are particularly fond of the bush trails, but in summer the City also opens several of the buildings in the old logging camp and museum.
Both doors of the bunkhouse were standing open that morning, so the pups and I detoured off the path through the old log cabin to capitalize on the opportunity for some different smells -the most important part of the walk is number of sniffs after all.
Then I noticed a little black box tucked against one of the door frames.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
There were four in the bunkhouse alone.
My heart sank because I was pretty sure I knew what they were. I checked anyway.
They were PROTECTA tamper-resistant rodent bait stations, commercial bait boxes used to hold rodenticide. The label listed several possible poisons, with WEATHER BLOX AT — brodifacoum 0.005% marked on the station.
They appeared empty and for some reason, that bothered me even more.
The cookhouse was open. I checked there -more bait stations.
Another logging-camp building was open -more.
I contacted the City of Thunder Bay. Parks Manager Cory Halvorsen subsequently confirmed that the City’s licensed pest-control contractor is using brodifacoum in the Centennial Park logging-camp buildings.
Well, shit.
Brodifacoum is a second-generation anticoagulant rodenticide. These poisons interfere with blood clotting and are generally more acutely toxic and persistent in animal tissue than their first-generation predecessors.
A rodent can consume a lethal dose in a single feeding. But it doesn’t die beside the bait station. Death can take several days – and it is a long painful death. But consider what a mouse can do during that time. It can leave the bunkhouse, wander through the logging camp, cross a trail and become somebody else’s breakfast.
The poison may be safely locked inside a tamper-resistant black box, but unfortunately nobody has explained the rules to the mouse.
The City emphasized in its response that the poison isn’t scattered outdoors. It is secured inside locked bait stations intended to prevent children, the public and non-target animals from accessing it directly.
Excellent.
The fox cannot open the box. Neither can the owl. They don’t have to.
They eat the rodent that did.
This is called secondary poisoning, and it is hardly some fringe environmental theory dreamed up by a woman walking her dogs through Centennial Park.
An Ontario study of wild raptors found anticoagulant rodenticides in 62 per cent of the birds examined. Brodifacoum was among the compounds detected most frequently.
Canadian research examining barn, barred and great horned owls found rodenticide residues in 70 per cent of the birds. Six were determined to have died from anticoagulant poisoning.
Every one of those six contained brodifacoum.
Every spring, those of us who frequent Centennial wait for another little family to appear around the logging camp.
Fox kits.
They play around the old buildings -possibly denning underneath them, while a dutiful Mama keeps watch nearby. This year’s kits were every bit as ridiculous and adorable as the ones before them.
Mama wasn’t looking nearly as good.
She was thin and her coat looked terrible. I saw her a few more times. Each time, a bit thinner, her coat a bit patchier. I worried she had mange, something we’ve seen repeatedly among wildlife in Current River, so I made a couple of calls to the MNR -the Ministry of No Response, if you’re wondering.
They responded exactly as expected which was no response.
I have also learned from residents via social media that they use poison bait themselves to deal with rodents. And I get it. I’ve dealt with mice more than once. One spring a rat ran through my Current River yard and I nearly put my house up for sale.
We eventually dealt with it using natural fixes and an electric kill trap.
But poison is different because the animal we’re trying to kill doesn’t necessarily stay where we’ve put the poison.
As I’ve walked Centennial’s trails over the years, I’ve occasionally come across small rodents lying dead right in the middle of a trail. It always struck me as strange. Mice presumably have plenty of places available to die that don’t involve arranging themselves conspicuously in the middle of my walking route.
A couple of years ago, my son -who also loves those bush walks, came across a little saw-whet lying dead in the middle of a trail.
I have no idea what killed those particular rodents or that sweet, tiny owl.
I just never seriously considered that a City-run park might itself be introducing rodenticide into this ecosystem. Now I know it is. And that caused me to revisit another concern: mange.
To be clear, rodenticide does not cause mange. Mange is caused by parasitic mites.
But there is research suggesting anticoagulant exposure can make the story more complicated.
Researchers studying wild bobcats in California found a strong association between anticoagulant rodenticide exposure and severe mange. Every bobcat in the study that died with severe mange had also been exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides. Later research found evidence that anticoagulant exposure can affect immune function, potentially leaving animals more vulnerable to disease.
Those studies involved bobcats, not Centennial’s foxes, and they certainly don’t establish what happened to Mama Fox.
But they do tell us something important about ecosystems: poison doesn’t always produce a neat little line between the creature we intend to kill and the consequence.
Sometimes there are dominoes. And Centennial Park contains an awful lot of them.
Foxes. Coyotes. Owls. Hawks. Eagles. Skunks. Raccoons. Bears. And beneath much of that food web, rodents.
Then there is the Gray Fox. Small mammals are part of its diet, and Gray Foxes have now been documented within Thunder Bay’s Boulevard Lake greenspace complex. We also have sightings elsewhere in the city, which becomes relevant when you remember that the City manages parks and facilities throughout Thunder Bay.
There is no evidence that one of our Gray Foxes has eaten a poisoned City mouse and there is plenty of reason to ensure one never does.
The City’s response to The Northern Hoot was straightforward. Rodents in City facilities, Halvorsen explained, were creating “serious health and safety risks” for employees and members of the public.
Rodents can absolutely create health hazards. Nobody wants City employees working among rodent urine and feces, and nobody is suggesting the City simply hand the bunkhouse over to the mice.
But there are other ways to manage rodents.
The City’s contractor acknowledged that sanitation, removing food sources, exclusion (keeping rodents out of a building by physically blocking the ways they get in), and building repairs are important components of rodent management, but said Centennial’s historic structures make complete exclusion difficult and potentially insufficient.
Fair enough.
They’re old log buildings. A determined mouse can squeeze through an opening approximately the size of my patience with City Hall these days.
Integrated Pest Management approaches generally begin with figuring out why rodents are there, removing food and water sources, closing access points where possible, repairing structures, monitoring populations, and using mechanical trapping.
Even Thunder Bay pest-control companies advertise these approaches.
Nor West Pest Control (your welcome for the free promo) says it considers available pest-control techniques before chemicals and aims to use the least amount of chemical necessary -“if any.” The company specifically identifies exclusion as the most effective method for reducing rodent intrusion.
Integrated Pest Management offers plenty of options before poison and nobody said responsible stewardship would always be the easiest option.
What I cannot understand is how brodifacoum becomes acceptable at all in a place like Centennial Park.These are old log buildings sitting in a living ecosystem, where rodents move freely between the structures and surrounding forest.
Locking the poison inside a tamper-resistant box may prevent a fox or owl from eating the bait directly, but it cannot keep a poisoned mouse inside. Once that mouse walks out the door, the City’s carefully secured poison has acquired four legs.
And there may be an owl, hawk or fox outside doing exactly what predators are supposed to do: hunting rodents. And let’s not forget the risk to pets and especially the off-leash dogs (please leash your dogs people) running at larger through the trails, which makes what I learned next rather astonishing.
The City has no policy governing any of this.
This may have been the most amazing part of the City’s response.
Halvorsen told The Northern Hoot:
“The City does not have a formal written policy governing the use of rodenticides on City owned property, but rather relies on the services of licensed vendors in order to mitigate impacts to facilities and public spaces.”
Read that again.
The City of Thunder Bay owns and manages parks and facilities throughout a community filled with wildlife. We have foxes, coyotes, owls, hawks, eagles and bears. We have municipal greenspaces through which a provincially threatened Gray Fox is moving.
And there is no formal City policy governing the use of rodenticides on City property.
A licensed pest-control contractor can certainly determine how best to eliminate rodents. But I would expect my municipal government to determine the environmental standards under which that work occurs.
Where is the requirement to exhaust non-chemical alternatives first? Where is the policy identifying environmentally sensitive locations? Where is the assessment of secondary-poisoning risk? Where is the requirement to consider predators living around a treatment site? Who decides when a second-generation anticoagulant as persistent as brodifacoum is warranted?
The City’s answer suggests those judgments have largely been left to the contractor.
Apparently, when we outsourced the pest control, we outsourced the environmental judgment and stewardship along with it.
I wonder what The Wilder Institute would think about this?
I live a stone’s throw from the Grenville Avenue entrance into Centennial Park.
I sleep with my bedroom window open all year long. That means the wildlife often wakes me- and the pups, up. Bears lumber out of Centennial and through the neighbourhood. Coyotes announce themselves. Deer wander past. Foxes make their strange nighttime noises.
I don’t mind any of it. I love it actually.
For years, there was another sound.
At night I would lie in bed listening to the sweet and persistent toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot of the northern saw-whet owls and, the deeper, resonant hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo of a great horned owls- no less than three of them on some nights, calling back and forth.
I haven’t heard them for about three years. I don’t know why.
There could be a hundred explanations, and I won’t manufacture one simply because I’ve now discovered brodifacoum in Centennial Park.
But I know more today than I knew several days ago. I know anticoagulant rodenticides are turning up in Ontario birds of prey. I know Canadian researchers have found them in owls. I know predators eat poisoned rodents. I know the Gray Fox eats small mammals. And I know the City responsible for balancing pest control with stewardship on municipal land has no written rodenticide policy.
I also know those fox kits were reliably around the logging camp every day. Until suddenly they weren’t.
I hope somebody from the MNR eventually intervened. I hope Mama recovered and moved those kits somewhere safer. There is no evidence allowing me to conclude otherwise.
But my thoughts go to graver possibilities.
That’s the thing about stewardship. Sometimes by the time we understand the consequences of what we’ve introduced into an ecosystem, the creature we loved seeing there is already gone.
Thunder Bay has spent years telling the world that we are “Superior by Nature.”
It’s a lovely slogan.
But after watching City Hall approve the conversion of public greenspace for development, only to discover that another City park is mobilizing poison into the ecosystem through the use of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticide -with no municipal policy governing its use, I’m beginning to think we may be due for an update.
“Indifferent to Nature” has a certain ring to it.
