Word: rodents
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Michael Mills, a veteran health inspector in New York City, helps create a map of the city you won't find in any guidebook: a rat map. That's right, a map of the New York neighborhoods that rodent populations call home...
...with an intensive pilot program in the Bronx. Mills and other inspectors scoured the streets, building by building, cataloging rat hot spots - places that show so-called active rat signs, such as lived-in burrows, fresh droppings, telltale gnaw marks on plastic garbage bags - in an effort to target rodent-control measures more effectively. That geocoding information was entered into each inspector's handheld indexing computer and aggregated with similar data from all across the borough. (See the top 10 animal stories...
...Today, rodent complaints by residents from all over New York are electronically pinpointed on the city's computerized rat map, which allows inspectors to track complaints and hot spots over time and determine how well rat-control efforts are working. The results, after just one year, should be music to the ears of most New Yorkers: when the pilot study began in the Bronx, inspectors found active rat signs on 3,100 of the borough's 39,000 properties. Preliminary results now show that 1,250 of those properties are rat-free. That's a 40% drop-off in infestations...
...years, the city government has dealt with rodent complaints on an individual basis. Citizens called up the health department, which sent out inspectors and, if need be, exterminators, who got rid of the immediate problem. But that left rats in nearby nests untouched, allowing them to repopulate the area. (See pictures of animals in love...
...garbage left on the sidewalk by a grocery store or restaurant. Getting rid of that rat population would require collaboration between the three city agencies that govern the subway, the park and the sidewalks - an endeavor that has gotten easier since the mayor's office set up the Rodent Task Force, which meets weekly to coordinate work...