New York City is famous for its sights—not least its giant piles of trash bags. And those have made the city so ripe for rat infestation that Mayor Eric Adams is calling a national summit to tackle the problem. This is the mayor who already moved to reform trash collection (what he called a "24-hour rat buffet) and created a position in his administration for a “Rat Czar.”
“New Yorkers may not know this about me—but I hate rats, and I’m confident most of our city’s residents do as well,” Adams said in a statement released Wednesday. “The best way to defeat our enemy is to know our enemy.”
That’s why Adams’ administration is hosting this inaugural summit on September 18 and 19 in partnership with New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University.
The event promises to bring together experts and leaders from across the country to “better understand urban rats and how to manage their populations,” according to the statement. Experts will include academic researchers, pest control managers, and municipal experts and participants from Boston, New Orleans, and Seattle. “Preeminent rat researchers” will be invited, as well.
How bad is the rat problem in New York City?
The rat problem in New York City goes way back—probably further than you’d think. The infestation started developing in the 18th century when Norwegian rats (also known as the brown rat, alley rat, or sewer rat) arrived from Europe, Nicole Carpenter, president of Black Pest Prevention, tells Fortune.
“These days, New York is still trying to solve this problem as rats pose a huge threat to public health and sanitation,” Carpenter says. Indeed, a 2023 estimate from Long Island-based pest control company MMPC says there are as many as 3 million rats living in New York City. That’s 1 million more than were estimated in 2010, previous research showed.
However, Adams said in his Wednesday announcement that rat sightings were down nearly 14% year-over-year in the city’s rat mitigation zones.
“We continue to make progress, but we’re not stopping there,” Adams said.
Why did the rat problem get so bad in New York City?
The major culprit for the large rat population in New York City is poor garbage management—largely due to the city’s high population that generates a massive amount of waste, Carpenter says.
“Everyone who has ever been to New York knows about its vibrant atmosphere. But besides Time Square, Central Park, and Statue of Liberty, New York is famous for its abundant garbage on the streets,” Carpenter says. “This waste, often left in plastic bags on the streets, provides ample food sources for rats, leading to their rapid proliferation.”
New York City officials have started mitigating this problem when they began the “Herculean task of getting all 44 million daily pounds of rat-attracting trash off the streets,” Jessica Tisch, NYC Department of Sanitation commissioner, said in a statement.
“New York City is taking the fight to the rats,” Tisch said. “The Urban Rat Summit is an opportunity to share best practices as the ‘trash revolution’ marches forward.”
How NYC started mitigating the rat problem
In April 2023, Adams appointed Kathleen Corradi as the city’s inaugural “rat czar” to mitigate the vast rodent population in the city.
“The rats are going to hate Kathy, but we're excited to have her leading this important effort,” Adams said in a statement. Corradi works across the city’s five boroughs, finding ways to limit rats’ food sources as well as test and implement systems to “detect and exterminate” rat populations.
Adams and Tisch in February also unveiled two new methods for improved waste management in the city, including automated, side-loading garbage trucks the administration calls a “superweapon against trash” and an improved containerization strategy that better determines the type and size of containers needed for different types of buildings in the city.
Aside from better trash management, the city is also weighing sterilization of rats. In April, City Councilmember Shaun Abreau introduced legislation that advocates for rat contraception instead of poison to control the city’s rat population. This is to prevent unintended consequences of rat poison killing NYC pets, like the Rottweiler puppy who died after eating rat poison while on a walk in Washington Heights in late 2022.
“We can’t poison our way out of this,” Abreau told local newspaper The City. “We cannot kill our way out of this.”
Carpenter agrees that the city will need to think beyond waste management to remedy the rat problem.
“Getting rid of rats in the city implies other measures such as the use of rodenticides and traps,” she says. “Work on the rat problem should be done on both levels: by the government and homeowners themselves. Only a comprehensive approach can bring good long-term results.”
