The Malibu City Council will consider a resolution that aims to curb sales and the use of rodenticides in the city next week.
The resolution, if passed, will urge local business against selling anticoagulant rodenticides, urge residents and property owners against using rodenticide on their properties and commit the city to not using rodenticide for maintenance work. The resolution is sponsored by Councilmembers Lou LaMonte and John Sibert, and will be considered at the council meeting on July 8.
“This really means a lot to us that we’ve got this resolution on the agenda,” Kian Schulman, secretary of the Malibu Agricultural Society, told The Malibu Times last month. The society first presented the resolution to City Council in January 2013.
The resolution specifically targets the use of anticoagulant rodenticides, which contain chemicals that cause death soon after rodents or other animals ingest the poison. Other animals, including pets, are sometimes killed by either eating the poison or, more often, eating rodents that have already consumed the poison. According the agenda, this type of secondary poisoning is known to affect hawks, owls, foxes and coyotes, among other California wildlife.
The agricultural society became aware of the problem last October when a mountain lion was found dead with traces of rodenticide in its system. Schulman told The Malibu Times that they began looking for a solution.
“The statistics in our wildlife is horrendous,” Schulman told The Malibu Times in June.
She said that, over the last five years, 74 percent of mountain lions and 95 percent of bobcats have been exposed to the rodenticide.
If the resolution passes, it will limit the sales of harmful rodenticides in Malibu stores. Several California cities, such as San Francisco, Berkeley and Marin, similarly limit sales of these rodenticides.
The city cannot ban the sale of rodenticides outright; only the state of California has that authority.
The resolution would not impact the sale or use of other, less harmful methods of pest control, such as those that are less toxic to mammals and require prolonged exposure before killing rodents.
Schulman said Malibu has already banned the use of poison on city parks and facilities. The resolution will further commit the city against using anticoagulant rodenticides.
Several Malibu businesses, including Anawalt Lumber, CVS, Ralphs, Pavilions, and A&B Malibu Plumbing, have already stopped selling rodenticide.
An Anawalt Lumber supervisor, Herbert Castio, told The Malibu Times in June that the store hadn’t sold rat poison in about a year.
“The community didn’t approve, so we’ve taken it off,” he said.
The store still provides other methods of rodent control, such as live animal traps and electronic pest deterrents.