New York City will certainly host its extremely first National Urban Rat Summit this loss, Mayor Eric Adams introduced Wednesday.

The top will certainly welcome professionals like scholastic scientists and community bug control supervisors to find with each other and share techniques on rodent reduction and “advance the science of urban rat management,” the city claimed in a news release. Experts from throughout the nation—consisting of Boston, New Orleans, and Seattle—will certainly be welcomed to go to the top, which will certainly be hung on Sept. 18 and 19.

“New Yorkers may not know this about me—but I hate rats, and I’m confident most of our city’s residents do as well,” Adams claimed in journalism launch. “The best way to defeat our enemy is to know our enemy. That’s why we’re holding this inaugural summit, to bring experts and leaders from across the country together to better understand urban rats and how to manage their populations.”

The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and Cornell University’s New York State Integrated Pest Management Program will certainly host the top.

Read More: Rat Infestations Are a Global Problem. Is Birth Control the Solution?

The statement of the top follows city authorities have actually started a number of campaigns to deal with the city’s expanding rat populace. New York is the 3rd “rattiest” city in the U.S., after Chicago and Los Angeles, according to the bug control business Orkin’s 2023 position. The positions are based upon the variety of new rat therapies—both property and public—that Orkin executed in the cities throughout the years.

In April 2023, Adams assigned Kathleen Corradi as the citywide supervisor of rodent reduction, the first individual to hold the placement implied to resolve the city’s rat trouble. The city additionally currently has 4 “Rat Mitigation Zones,” which are locations that the city targets to lower rat populaces.

New York City Department of Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch additionally led a campaign to containerize all 14 billion extra pounds of garbage that the city creates each year, according to the city’s news release. All that garbage made use of to rest on the road out of containers for hours, bring in rats. (Tisch is maybe best recognized for the line that made her go viral in October 2022: “The rats are absolutely going to hate this announcement. But the rats don’t run this city. We do.”)

Rat discoveries reported to 311 have actually given that decreased, according to the city’s news release. Within the city’s Rat Mitigation Zones, rat discoveries have actually decreased virtually 14%.

“Under Mayor Adams’ leadership, New York City is taking the fight to the rats, enacting proven strategies that have been delayed by inertia for too long—and getting results, with rat sightings down 12 of the 13 months since we began the Herculean task of getting all 44 million daily pounds of rat-attracting trash off the streets,” Tisch claimed in the city’s news release. “The Urban Rat Summit is an opportunity to share best practices as the ‘Trash Revolution’ marches forward.”