Alberta farmers and homeowners can sleep easy tonight.
The government is doubling down on its efforts to keep the province rat-free. Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation RJ Sigurdson announced last week that the government had given $110,000 to the Rat on Rats campaign, run by the Alberta Invasive Species Council.
The campaign will encourage people to call in any rat sightings or traces of rats that they see. It’s a public education campaign – advertisements on billboards and online will remind people of the importance of reporting rat activity.
$110,000 may seem like a small amount to invest in rat prevention – we rarely see government funding announcements below $1 million. In general, though, preventing a problem is a whole lot cheaper than curing it.
Canadian statistics have yet to be calculated, but the US estimates that rats cause $19 billion in damage yearly. When they get into buildings, they chew through electrical wires, causing fires. They carry diseases, and they cause significant crop damage.
Alberta can pride itself on having to spend so little on managing rats.
70 Years Rat Free
Alberta has been the world’s largest rat-free zone for 70 years. This is not by chance. In the 1950s, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation noticed an increase in rats in the province and started the Rat Control Program. They set up a Rat Control Zone on the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta and monitored this 600-km-long strip for rats. They then went through the whole province and got rid of the rats wherever they found them.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation says that people working together are the province’s best defence against rats. As global trade increases and more people travel around the world, more rats have been entering the province. But if Albertans continue to work together, we’ll be able to maintain a rat-free province.
Prevention Saves Money
Alberta’s rat management program is a friendly reminder of the benefits of prevention. Planning ahead to ensure that a problem doesn’t happen is a better use of public money than trying to troubleshoot after the problem.
The same principle could be applied to Alberta’s forest management. Poor management, mainly because of long-term fire suppression, has turned our forests into tinderboxes for decades.
The Jasper fire cost $880 million in insurance damages, and it was one of dozens of property-damaging fires this year. For many of us in the province, it was an emotional time. Even Premier Danielle Smith wept on camera while recounting the news. Don Braid of the Calgary Herald said, “What I saw was not political acting but the pain of a leader who knows she’s utterly powerless.”
Alberta’s rat management story tells a different tale. We are not powerless in the face of natural menaces. Alberta’s status as a rat-free zone didn’t just happen—it was a decision that the government made in the 1950s and that we, as a provincial community, have worked consistently to support since then.
Alberta has the power to manage other disasters with the same can-do attitude it has taken toward rat management.
