Boston’s latest battle plan in its long-standing war on rats centers around creating a widespread famine to slowly starve and eventually kill off its rodent population.

The strategy, which differs from the city’s prior approach to killing rats by lethality, is one of the key recommendations of a long-awaited city-commissioned report released Wednesday by renowned urban rodentologist, Dr. Bobby Corrigan.

The report provided a roadmap for and was released alongside the city’s new Rodent Action Plan, announced by Mayor Michelle Wu and described by her office as a “coordinated, multi-agency initiative to mitigate the rodent population in Boston and maintain an excellent quality of life” for residents and visitors.

“We’re working hard to make Boston a home for everyone — except for rats,” Wu said in a statement. “Our rodent action plan, which is informed by this data-driven report, will guide our approach across our neighborhoods.”

The report highlights various causes and effects of rodent infestation, including poor trash mitigation, storage and removal. Corrigan said he witnessed overflowing dumpsters, plastic garbage bags lying on sidewalks and litter baskets permitting easy access to rats at night throughout site visits at various neighborhoods.

Human behavior contributes significantly to the problem, Corrigan wrote. He cited the food refuse dynamic, or the disposal of food that’s still appropriate for human consumption, as the No. 1 driver of rat populations in all cities, including Boston.

“It can’t be over-emphasized that the Boston (and any big city) garbage conundrum must be addressed to have any realistic impact on the future of Boston’s city rat population,” Corrigan wrote.

Dion Irish, the city’s chief of operations, said the report’s findings provide recommendations that reinforce what the city has already been trying to achieve, which is to deny rats the food that they need to cut down on their population.

“Rats love big cities, but the feeling is not mutual, so it’s something that we always have to be vigilant about and endeavor to continue to do better,” Irish said. “I don’t think we’ll ever eliminate rats altogether, but I think we can certainly reduce populations to an extent where folks aren’t experiencing them in their everyday activities.”

The report hones in on hot-spot neighborhoods in Boston, where rats are most prevalent and the city should seek to target mitigation strategies: downtown, Chinatown, North End, South End, Haymarket, Allston/Brighton, Back Bay and Beacon Hill, Dorchester (mostly South Dorchester) and Roxbury.

It also outlines various approaches that can be taken in places where infestations are most prominent, including parks, older brick-lined sewer systems, public housing authority complexes, and construction sites.

Corrigan advocates for moving away from rodenticide and other rat poisons that have traditionally lined bait boxes throughout city parks, and have been shown to pose a danger to wildlife and pets that ingest the poison or rats that have eaten it.

John Ulrich, assistant commissioner of the Inspectional Services Department’s environmental services division, said the report came out strongly against second-generation anticoagulants, which the city had already started to phase out last year.

The city will continue to use lethal control, Ulrich said, pointing to success with carbon monoxide. There’s no way for Boston to kill its way out of the problem, he said, however, since rats are particularly adept at reproduction.

“The way that you make rodents reproduce less is you make them less comfortable,” Ulrich said. “You reduce their harborage and you reduce their food, which reduces the size of their litters and their ability to reproduce.”

Ulrich will head up the city’s pest-control operations, as part of the multi-agency effort recommended by Corrigan’s report.

He was appointed as permanent chair of a rodent action plan working group that includes the city’s operations cabinet, inspectional services, public works, Boston Public Health Commission, parks and recreation, the Boston Housing Authority, Boston 311 and the water and sewer commission, among others.

Corrigan’s recommendation for the city to stick with its multi-department pest–control approach rather than create a new department drew criticism from City Councilor Ed Flynn, who has long advocated for a standalone office.

Flynn also took issue with what he felt was the Wu administration’s decision to go against the report’s recommendation to explore the hiring of a rat czar, which he has also pushed for, citing the approach New York City has taken.

Tania Del Rio, commissioner of Inspectional Services, said the city chose to have Ulrich take on the responsibilities of what a rat czar would do, with a different title, rather than make another hire.

Upon the report’s release, Flynn sent an email to the mayor, her chief of staff and policy director, obtained by the Herald, expressing his disappointment with being left out of the process.

He also criticized the Boston Public Health Commission, which was quoted in Corrigan’s report as indicating that rats do not currently pose a high public health threat to the residents of Boston, for “downplaying the impacts that this significant quality of life issue is having on neighbors across the city.”

The report also excluded another City Council push for rodent birth control, but the city is not closing the door on that option.

“We haven’t taken that off the table,” Irish said.