All of Gabriele James's Comments + Replies

Hi Emrik, 

Thanks so much for reading the article. I'm glad you found it interesting! I'm also concerned about the costliness of more humane alternatives, but perhaps there is some hope that some of the costs could be driven down if there was enough adoption to scale production. Some of the interventions may also be more costly in the short-term but prove less expensive than ARs in the long-term. In this case I have in mind things like rodent-proofing and deterrence. 

I agree with you too that from an advocacy perspective, alternatives to ARs are m... (read more)

Hi Charles, 

Thanks for taking the time to read our article. You raise some good questions.

1. Concrete data on urban rat populations is very scarce, partly due to the difficulty and labour intensiveness of gathering data. Even when these studies are conducted, the numbers tend to be broad estimates based on nuisance reports or capture-recapture methods. For example, in 2014 the estimated rat population of New York City was around 2 million . Considering that Cape Town has a smaller population and lower population density than NYC, it is plausible that it