Not everyone would even answer a job advertisement looking for a candidate with a "killer instinct," but Kathleen Corradi apparently meets the criteria. She has recently become New York City's director of rodent mitigation — or, as New Yorkers prefer to call her: "rat czar." "The rats are going to hate Kathy," New York's mayor, Eric Adams, said at a press conference in April, speaking about Corradi, a former schoolteacher and anti-rat activist. "We're excited to have her leading this important effort."
Public enemy number one
Rats are clever and adaptable. New York has been trying to deal with them for decades, with little success. Estimates put the city's rat population at two million. In 2022, the number of documented rat sightings doubled, to over 60,000. Closed restaurants and a lack of garbage in the subway during the pandemic forced many rats to come out looking for food, so it's hard to know: Are there really more rats or are they just easier to see now? We do know that rats spread prolifically, having sex up to 20 times a day. They produce about six litters a year, with an average of eight to ten (but sometimes twice as many) babies each.
Adams has described rats as "public enemy number one" because they put the health of New Yorkers at risk, by potentially contaminating food and spreading disease. Corradi's job involves coordinating the strategies of various city agencies. Her first task is to introduce a "rat mitigation zone" in Harlem, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, where 19 full-time and 14 seasonal workers are trying to control the rat population, at a cost of $3.5 million. Strategies that are successful there will be used in other parts of the city. She's also asked for the public's help. "Rats are tough, but New Yorkers are tougher," she said.
Rat attack
Corradi studied biology and urban sustainability, and has been fighting New York's rats on and off for years. "I have a long history with rats," she told reporters. At age ten, she collected signatures on petitions for anti-rat measures in her neighborhood. After teaching in Brooklyn for several years, she got a job with New York's department of education, where she led a program to reduce the rat population in almost 120 public schools.
Through this program, Corradi successfully reduced the rats' access to food, water and shelter. She plans to use all that experience in her new job. "Behavior change and culture shifts do not happen overnight," she said. "We need to get the message out to New Yorkers. This is going to take all of us. Fighting rats starts with fighting litter, garbage and food waste."
It's a very big challenge. High-density cities like New York are a rat paradise. And things could actually get worse. Rats are generally less active in the cold. If climate change causes milder winters, however, it could lead to one more litter per year, which would mean many, many more rats.