SAUGUS — The new pesticide-free rodent control program, dubbed the Sentinel Program, has received an update from Public Health Director John Fralick, seeing the pilot as a success so far.
“We’re using these things called Sentinel Boxes down in the Cliftondale area,” he said.
The area was chosen due to the higher number of rodent complaints.
“We have been getting daily updates… and that’s kind of the beauty of these boxes, is that they give us real-time updates on their kill rates and there’s no residual activity after the fact,” Fralick said.
These boxes have a CO2-powered piston inside that quickly kills the rodent.
“We’re slowly watching all of these locations that we have set up slowly start to report less and less. When we first put everything down there, we were getting a lot of updates on a daily basis, and now it’s down to a couple a week. So, we have seen some very positive results through this first pilot,” he said.
Fralick said he doesn’t see the program stopping, but actually expanding over the course of the next couple of months as they look at other areas with high reporting of rodent sightings.
“We’re going to be placing everything on town property surrounding these concentrations and efforts to kind of keep up with the populations now,” he said.
Board of Health member Joseph Dorant asked if this program would help reduce or eliminate second-generation traps.
“Immediately, we’re seeing results, and the price points are not debilitating by any stretch. What I am planning on doing is come budget time, I’m going to look at expanding our rodent control budget a little bit,” Fralick said.
He highlighted the fact that the Sentinel Boxes provide a clean kill, cleanup, maintenance, and live updates.
“It’s kind of a next-gen better way of doing it,” he said. “The results that we’re seeing — we’re seeing a new wave of rodent control.”
Fralick said they’re looking at a combination of these boxes, the second-generation control, and contraceptives later down the line.
“The sky’s the limit as far as I’m concerned when you look at the data that we’re seeing.
