Recently, the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU) UK have announced, with support to make the necessary amendments from UK biocides regulator the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), that sales of products containing bromadiolone and difenacoum for use in open areas and at waste dumps will cease on 4 July 2024.
CRRU Chairman Dr Alan Buckle states that the change was a unanimous decision by all CRRU Directors to help meet rodenticide stewardship’s environmental targets.
These environmental targets include a reduction in UK wildlife, which is monitored through measuring SGARs in barn owls as part of the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme.
Lee Walker, lead scientist for the PBMS comments, “The team at UKCEH note with interest these efforts by CRRU to reduce exposure to SGARs in wildlife. The PBMS monitoring has demonstrated both the significant contribution difenacoum and bromadiolone make to the overall SGAR burden in species such as barn owls and red kites, and the recent rise in brodifacoum exposure. We hope that the monitoring we conduct will show that these changes in use will have the desired reduction in exposure to SGARs in wildlife”.
A more detailed press release from CRRU can be viewed here: https://www.thinkwildlife.org/ending-use-of-second-generation-anticoagulant-rodenticides-bromadiolone-and-difenacoum-away-from-buildings
The latest PBMS reports can be downloaded from https://pbms.ceh.ac.uk/content/pbms-reports