Boxborough Petitions the Politburo for Right to Ban Rat Poison That Kills Everything Else Too

Boxborough Petitions the Politburo for Right to Ban Rat Poison That Kills Everything Else Too

Bill HD.6240 would grant the town of Boxborough local authority to prohibit the use and sale of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides — a class of long-acting blood-thinning pesticides known to kill owls, hawks, foxes, and other predators that eat poisoned rodents before they die.

Commissar Danillo A. Sena of the 37th Middlesex, joined by Senator James B. Eldridge, brings this petition forward with local approval already secured — meaning Boxborough’s own municipal apparatus has already voted in favor of receiving this authority. The decree protects no industry and costs no treasury. It transfers regulatory power downward, to the collective unit most directly affected by what is eating its wildlife.

Second-generation anticoagulants — brodifacoum, bromadiolone, and their comrades — are legal under state and federal law but have been documented causing secondary poisoning deaths in raptors and mammals throughout Massachusetts. The People’s Republic has seen similar local authorization bills pass for other municipalities. Boxborough now requests its place in that queue.