The Boston City Council is considering deploying birth control to cut down on the city’s rat population as an alternative to killing rodents with poison, which has inadvertently led to the deaths of local pets and wildlife.

Councilor Enrique Pepén introduced a measure Wednesday that urges the city to consider implementing a “community-safe rodent birth control” program that would prevent rats from ovulating, while also protecting the animals who eat them.

“Our families deserve safe and effective strategies to keep wildlife away from our homes, and we have a responsibility to protect animals, including our pets, who call Boston home too,” Pepén said at the day’s City Council meeting.

Today, the city and private management companies are spending millions of dollars to put out bait boxes with rodenticide poisons, a method he described as being both financially wasteful and strategically ineffective.

“These poisons have failed to keep our community safe nor resolve rodent issues,” Pepén said.

He cited a number of examples of the unintended targets of rat poison, including an owl that bled from its eyes after eating a rat that that consumed the poison at Faneuil Hall, a local bald eagle that hemorrhaged to death and a 4-month old puppy that convulsed to death.

Red-tailed hawks were common victims as well. Rats that ingest rodenticide poison typically move more slowly, making them easier targets for birds of prey.

While rarer, one in 10,000 children are exposed to an anticoagulant poison intended for rats each year, leading to internal bleeding, anemia, bloody urine, and even death, according to Pepén’s hearing order.

The birth control Pepén is pushing the city to consider would be non-fatal, a type of sweetened water that rats would consume and become sterilized. Unlike the poison, animals that consume those rats would not be affected by birth control.

Non-fatal birth control has been used in Newton; Hartford, Conn.; San Francisco and has already been deployed by volunteers in Jamaica Plain, in coordination with City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, who co-sponsored the hearing order.

The Jamaica Plain pilot program led to an 80% reduction in rat populations, the hearing order states.

Louijeune attributed the success seen thus far in that neighborhood to trash that has been kept under control. She also pointed to the “small enough” geography — over three blocks that were piloted near Hyde Square and Brookside Community Garden — that allowed volunteers to create a “great natural habitat” for rodents.

Rats were not being poisoned but rather being given birth control in that area. The contraceptive pellets are not harmful if consumed by other wildlife, Louijeune said, but that also creates an efficiency challenge since they’re aimed at rat sterilization.

“The pellets are not yet commercially produced, and so there’s not yet enough evidence to show that this is something that works successfully and that can be scaled,” Louijeune said.

The latest push from the City Council differs from what has been discussed in past months and years.

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Just this past April, a hearing was held on a city ordinance put forward by Councilors Ed Flynn and Liz Breadon that would create a standalone pest-control office dedicated to killing rodents.

Flynn said at the time that the department would be focused on researching and carrying out the best methods of extermination. The city saw a “huge increase in mice and rats throughout Boston during the pandemic, a problem that continues to affect every neighborhood, he said upon filing the ordinance last winter.

Of the birth control alternative, Flynn said Wednesday, “I’m here to listen and learn more about this issue,” while describing the city’s rat infestation as a critical public health concern facing residents.

The Wu administration hired Dr. Robert “Bobby” Corrigan, an internationally recognized expert on rats and mice to develop a rodent mitigation plan. At April’s Council hearing, Corrigan cautioned that contraceptive-laced bait could prove to be costly if tested on a city-wide basis in Boston.

Corrigan said eliminating food sources for rodents should be the city’s top priority, pointing to its problems with improper waste disposal.

When contacted, the mayor’s office did not take a position on the birth control method being considered by the City Council, and said Corrigan’s report with mitigation recommendations has not yet been finalized.