It continues, “Bald eagles are also protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which imposes similar prohibitions.”

The death of the bald eagle known as MK, who nested in Arlington’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery and succumbed to anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning in March 2023, triggered significant public support for more restrictions on19 powerful second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, or SGARs. MK’s daughter, known as 25C according to Mass Wildlife, was found near death in Arlington in 2021 from the same cause, per the petition.

SGARs have been banned on Arlington town property since early 2023. Town Meeting in 2022 overwhelmingly approved a warrant article severely curtailing their use anywhere in Arlington. However, it is MDAR’s pesticide board, rather than individual municipalities, that has jurisdiction over the poisons’ use by businesses and private citizens, so state Sen. Cindy Friedman and local state Rep. Sean Garballey, with local state Rep. Dave Rogers as a sponsor, petitioned the state legislature for home rule in January 2023.

New tactic: Seeking executive-branch action

While Arlington’s petition for home rule, H.804, makes its way through the legislative process along with other bills, Harvard’s petition instead seeks change through the executive branch by directly asking MDAR to “act promptly to prevent continued unreasonable adverse effects on Massachusetts wildlife by suspending the registrations of anticoagulant rodenticides and initiating individual reviews of their active ingredients before determining whether any such product is eligible for registration in the future.”

In the petition’s words, anticoagulants “are designed to kill their victims over several days and necessarily create populations of poison-carrying rodents, who remain alive long enough to transfer the poison to their predators.”

SGARs were developed after rodents became resistant in the 1970s and 1980s to First-Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides; all such poisons are ultimately subject to regulation by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. In 2008, the US EPA added restrictions on SGARs’ use, partly in response to child poisonings, which have been reduced but not eliminated. At the same time, the petition says, “secondary poisonings of birds persist under present regulations: according to a 2020 study from the Tufts Wildlife Clinic . . . Massachusetts birds of prey showed higher rates of anticoagulant rodenticide exposure from 2017 to 2019 than during study periods prior to when the regulations went into effect.”

Finally, “Even when used according to their label directions and ‘in accordance with widespread and commonly recognized practice,’ ” the Harvard law students conclude, anticoagulant rodenticides “effectively guarantee that violations of federal conservation statutes will regularly occur.”

Second petition also delivered

Separately, the Harvard clinic also has petitioned Secretary Rebecca Tepper, whose Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) oversees MDAR, for a “review of damage to MESA-protected species caused by state registration of anticoagulant rodenticide.” MESA is the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act.

Under the law, Tepper can ask MDAR to consult with the National Heritage and Endangered Species Program, or NHSEP. “Among other things,” the petition continues, “the relevant state agency [MDAR] must also submit evidence to the EEA Secretary and NHSEP demonstrating that ‘all practicable means and measures have been taken to avoid damage to state listed species and their habitats.’ ” Both petitions seek to show that the Subcommittee of the Pesticide Board has not done so.

Longtime town resident Kiesel, founder of Save Arlington Wildlife and Save Massachusetts Wildlife Education Fund, earlier this year told YourArlington that “Save Arlington Wildlife has exerted some pressure on MDAR, but their own boards have pest-control professionals. What would impress MDAR and the State House [would be] if more municipalities joined Arlington and started pressuring them to ban SGARs.”

Kiesel is encouraged by the momentum on this front, with Newbury, in the northeastern corner of the state, and Lexington, Arlington’s neighbor to the immediate northwest, also having banned the use of SGARs on town property. Newton’s home-rule petition, along with Arlington’s, has also advanced to the State House floor. But home-rule petitions, Kiesel said, “usually die in committee,” as Arlington’s last attempt at home rule in banning SGARs did.

She says that the idea of a legal challenge to MDAR’s registration of anticoagulants came up thanks to an advocate in California — Lisa Owens Viani, executive director of Raptors Are The Solution (RATS). Marci Cemenska, founder of Save Lexington Wildlife and another named petitioner, reached out to Harvard’s clinic last summer, so this effort has been a near-year-long process. “The clinic’s students and attorneys then developed the ideas for the petitions based on the students’ research,” said Sarah Pickering, the clinic’s communications director.

Kiesel also is impressed by the thoroughness. “They interviewed all of us extensively and did a lot of research into a lot of environmental laws.”

Will Massachusetts follow California?

California’s government confers an obligation, similar to that of Massachusetts, to review pesticide registrations for environmental impact and safety. In 2018, RATS sued the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, which agreed to evaluate SGARs. In 2020, a bill in California imposing a moratorium on SGARs — with certain exceptions — became law.

Under the Massachusetts Pesticide Control Act of 1978, MDAR, as the petition puts it, “conforms Massachusetts’ pesticide laws to the federal requirements under FIFRA” (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, which EPA enforces). At this stage in its review of SGARs, write the petitioners, EPA “appears poised to impose further restrictions on these pesticides in light of their serious impacts on wildlife.” YourArlington wrote about this review process in February.

At that time, MDAR’s communications director would say only that the department awaits EPA’s final decision, which is expected to come only after consultation with the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife — perhaps as late as the end of 2026.

The petition asks MDAR to go further than EPA, if it reclassifies SGARs for restricted rather than general use, is likely to go.

“At best, reclassifying rodenticides for restricted use would serve as a partial—and insufficient—mitigation strategy. It is not clear whether this measure would curtail the overall volume of rodenticides employed within the state,” the petition argues; MDAR reported that volume at 536,000 pounds in 2022. The petition cites a 2023 study, published in Environment Monitoring and Assessment, of deceased New England fishers, carnivorous mammals that “are generally considered deep-forest inhabitants that are not expected to have high exposure … 98 percent tested positive for at least one anticoagulant rodenticide, and more than half had been exposed to three or more different anticoagulant rodenticides.”

That 2023 study, which has no obvious online link, was cited in the petition as follows: Jacqueline Y. Buckley et al., High prevalence of anticoagulant rodenticide exposure in New England Fishers (Pekania pennanti), 195 ENV’T MONITORING & ASSESSMENT no. 1348, at 3 (Oct. 2023)

MDAR’s own website says that “Massachusetts pesticide laws are more restrictive than those of EPA.” The Subcommittee of the Pesticide Board demonstrated this in 2021 when it reclassified five neonicotinoid insecticides from general to state-restricted use because of concerns about the harm they cause to pollinators. Now-Gov. Maura Healey championed such restrictions in her immediate previous job as state attorney general.

Future possible steps

For now, MDAR and Tepper have done no more than to acknowledge receipt of the petitions; MDAR’s communications director recently declined to comment further.

“I think there’ll be a response,” said Kiesel. Though reluctant to predict how long it would take to get such a response, she said earlier this month that “If they do not respond in a way that we feel is consistent with our demands, the next step would be to request a hearing with the board.”

A thought from another advocate is here. “We have presented the state with very strong evidence that anticoagulant rodenticides fail to meet the state’s pesticide registration requirements,” said Sarah Pickering, communications director for the Harvard clinic. “We will consider all options carefully if MDAR continues to register these poisons despite the evidence that they are wreaking havoc on the foodweb.”

In the shorter term, there is reason to think that others in the area are at least thinking about this issue. On June 10, the Metro Public Health Collaborative, made up of public-health officials in Brookline, Newton, Belmont and Arlington, announced “a multimedia campaign to educate residents about rodents and share proactive ways of managing the population,” with an emphasis on “humane solutions.” As a first step, on June 11 and 12 the group hosted pest-management training for local food establishments.

More on the Town of Arlington’s ongoing rodent-control efforts can be learned here >>