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The Current Transcript for July 21, 2017

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

You're told you are nothing. You are nobody. You will never be anything, you don't matter. Those kind of messages, they are a part of grooming that make you feel like you have no right.

LAURA LYNCH: As a child, Freda Ens knew that in the night, any night, someone or even a relative, might come to where she was sleeping. The sexual abuse was regular and devastating. She thought about suicide but instead she escaped. Now she is speaking out. As the Federal Health Minister and Ontario's indigenous leaders gather to talk about the crisis in youth suicide in northern communities, we will shine a light on a dark subject; The link between suicide and sexual abuse. And then:

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VOICE : Brown rat, sewer Rat, city rat, it's the rat you commonly see it in subway systems, coming out of sewers, eating garbage on the street, burrowing in parks.

LL: We have all seen them scurrying down alleys, poking through garbage, chewing on walls and wires. Rats are survivors and world travelers. They are the scourge of the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the northern coast of B.C., decimating seabird populations. Now after efforts to eradicate the rodents on some of the islands, scientists are using the bounty of recovered rat corpses to investigate how they travel and why they might survive us all. Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and this is the summer edition of The Current.

[Music]

'It's an epidemic': Sexual abuse and suicide rate among Indigenous youth

Guests: Freda Ens, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Jane Philpott

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I knew [Unintelligible]. I knew people would come in the room and do things to me. He would touch me in places I wouldn't even want to be touched. Back then, a few had alcohol, you were allowed to party in there. So, six or seven people had did that to me. It kind of messed me up in school.

LL: That young man's name is Christian. He spoke with the CBC's Fifth Estate about a difficult topic; the sexual abuse he experienced as a child and as an Indigenous youth. Christian isn't alone in making the difficult decision to share his story. Increasingly, sexual abuse is being understood as the continuation of a shared legacy that dates back to residential schools. Here is another story, this one we shared with the We Matter campaign, which is aiming to give first nations youth a voice.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: And saying I am a survivor and even saying I am a sexual abuse or I have lived through that, is one of the hardest things that I have ever had to say out loud. There are so many of us that have had to endure nearly the same thing. It's heartbreaking to know that this is a silent epidemic within our first nations’ communities. I just want to encourage other people to come forward. We are the future leaders for the younger generation. And they're going to learn so much. But we need to open that dialogue.

LL: That silent epidemic will be part of a discussion next Monday when Federal Minister of Health Jane Philpott meets with indigenous leaders and representatives from the Ontario government, to examine the crisis of youth suicide in northern communities. I will speak with Minister Philpott in a few minutes. But my first guest is Freda Ens, a victim services worker. She also experienced sexual abuse as a child growing up in B.C.’s Old Massett village, at Haida community and Freda Ens joins me from Smithers, British Columbia, hello.

FREDA ENS: Hello.

LL: Ms. Ens, what do you think when you hear those voices of Indigenous youth?

FREDA ENS: It's heartbreaking. It's devastating. These are our children. It's gone on for generations and that has to stop. It's an epidemic; it's a crisis that it needs to stop.

LL: Can you tell me about your own experience?

FREDA ENS: I was so young when the abuse started. I have no clear recollection; it's all that I knew. I grew up basically having no rights as a child to my own body. So it was very, very confusing. It was hard to understand that come as a child there was no safety. There's nowhere to go where there's safety to escape. My adopted dad was one. We went to court and he was sentenced, he got sentenced to nine years. At that time, there were four of us that went to court against him but we know that there were many others. When we keep it a secret that secret has power over us.

LL: Was there ever a time when you considered suicide?

FREDA ENS: Yes there was. As a kid, there were times that I thought about it. There were things that, you know, I wondered how to do it. Even after as an adult, because I was in a marriage where what had happened to me as a child was used against me. I was told I was damaged goods. Nobody would want me. So for me that was it was really important because I came to a place where I felt like it's never going to end. And I remember looking at my children at one point and thinking they would be better off without me.

LL: I am so sorry to hear about it. I'm wondering when you were a child and you were being abused, you actually were able to leave and get out. How did you do that?

FREDA ENS: I ran away to a couple who became my foster parents and they were wonderful. They took me in but they also told me I had to go back to my home, or they'd be charged with harboring a runaway. So I did have to go back and I went back for a bit. And at that time one of the things that I think happened so often with victims and I've heard it over and over again, is part of what happens in the process and in families, and I think a lot of that goes back even to the victims of residential schools, where you're told you're nothing. You're nobody. You'll never be anything, you don't matter.

LL: Can you draw a direct link between the abuse you suffered and residential schools?

FREDA ENS: My parents were both residential school survivors. There were, and I know many victims and many of our communities where the impact of that goes back to residential schools. Under the Indian Act everything we lost, you know, it goes back to that. Before that there were no words for sexual abuse in our languages. There was no such thing.

LL: You decided obviously to speak out publicly about this when so many people keep silent. Why did you speak out?

FREDA ENS: My daughter, back in the 90s, she was in elementary school. A girl in her class had committed suicide. And I remember my daughter coming to me and saying mom if she knew your story, I don't think she would have done that because she'd be able to see you could go through that and come out the other side. And for me I really felt because I also was, in the work I was doing at that time, I was seeing so much and hearing so much and realizing that the people I was seeing coming through my work, to my office, their story was my story, my story was their story. This was something people were not talking about, didn't know about. And I thought if I can help one child, if I can help one kid not to feel so hopeless like they have to take their own life, to end that.

LL: Beyond listening, what do you want politicians and community leaders to think about, when it comes to developing strategies for suicide prevention?

FREDA ENS: I would like them to think about what is the legacy I'm going to leave behind, as a government person, as a politician. When I look at these crises in the communities, that these innocent children are feeling so helpless, so hopeless that they have to take their own lives. We have the declaration of the rights of the child. Read that and realize that as a government you have a responsibility. You've got inadequate housing in many, many reserves. You've got poverty, you've got no jobs.

LL: Ms. Ens, we will be speaking to the Federal Minister of Health in just a moment, and I wonder what you would like to say to minister Phillpotts.

FREDA ENS: It's time to act. We've got ten year old kids, 12 year old kids taking their own lives. It's time to stop turning a blind eye and a deaf ear. It's time to listen and to act.

LL: Ms. Ens, I thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

FREDA ENS: Thank you.

LL: Freda Ens is a victim services worker who experienced sexual abuse as a child. She is in Smithers, British Columbia. For more now I want to bring in Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux of Lakehead University. She holds the university's chair on truth and reconciliation. Ms. Wesley-Esquimaux is of the Chippewas of Georgina Island, Ontario, and she joins me from there this morning. Hello.

CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX: Hi. Good morning.

LL: What did you think as you listen to Freda Ens?

CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX: Well I think it's heartbreaking to hear what she had to go through and how she was treated. But what she had to say is absolutely true of a lot of us. I mean, I went through the same thing myself as a child so I understand how difficult it can be to actually talk about it or to identify it, but it's for the same reasons that she said she talked about it. I have talked about it and I've pushed to have sexual abuse be a part of the conversation. It is part of the legacy in fact, but it also engages other people. We just did a film on Ralph Rowe, who was in Northern Ontario, called Survivors Rowe. It's about his sexual abuse of, as many as 500 boys and girls, and the continuing effects of that sexual abuse on those communities. They will tell you, like it just has not stopped. And people see indigenous peoples as a vulnerable population, which they are, for many of the reasons that she mentioned and people show up and do atrocious things to children in the north, because they think they can get away with it. And so far I think they have.

LL: How significant is the link, then, between sexual abuse and suicide amongst youth in Indigenous communities in Canada?

CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX: Well I think it's probably very high. I've talked to lots of youth myself. I started an organization called the Canadian Roots Exchange, who had an opportunity to speak to lots of young people. I read the Horizons of Hope, that NAN put out in 1990 and then in 2001. And basically the conversation is: “Make it stop, make it stop”. And Anna Betty Achneepineskum, who is one of the deputy chiefs at NAN, has got a sexual abuse strategy that she wants to see implemented. We're trying from different angles to get this conversation going. The thing I think that's really important what this conversation is people's fear. You know, we don't want to make this conversation about incarceration. We don't want to make it about witch hunts and, and putting people in jail. What we want to do is start the conversation with youth, among youth and between them and adults, that say: “Look this has got to stop.” and it's a compulsion. It's a normative thing in some communities. It's got to stop and we have to have the conversation first so that the suicides. And like she said, people sometimes can't think of any other way out because they have no access to [unintelligible], they have no access to money, they have no access to other families because there's crowding and overcrowding in other communities and in homes. This is a big conversation that has to happen.

LL: So it's clear that this has been going on for a long, long time. Is there research being conducted data collected, about the extent of sexual abuse in the communities?

CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX: Well, you know, is there data collected? I'm sure there is. And we've all kind of written about it in a variety of different kinds of ways. But again it is really a hidden score. It's a it's people don't talk about it and people hide it and basically I'm out looking at the statistics for the last couple of years, and they said 93 percent, 93 percent of children who are sexually abused, never tell anyone, not even their parents, until they're adults, in their 30s sometimes. So, if they're not talking about it, how do we help? And how do we help them know that it's safe for them to come and speak to somebody. Because unless we talk about it, it just keeps happening and many of those children who are abused not all of them certainly will find themselves in similar circumstances, or their own children and in those circumstances, because they won't know how to be vigilant.

LL: Now, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're not advocating taking a criminal law approach to those who are causing the abuse? You want a conversation instead.

CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX: No. Well, you know I don't want people to name names. I mean I think we should start off with a situation where we talk about what is sexual abuse? What does it look like? What does it feel like to children? How does it affect their ability to develop into healthy adults? Let's start the conversation so people have a better understanding of what's has been caused to them or what they're causing to others. And you can't just take people out of communities, and many of those men, and sometimes women there's no question about that, some of those people are the sole providers of families. You know they're the ones who chop the wood and go hunting. You start removing people out of communities especially in urban communities, you're creating a whole other kind of a problem for those families and you're opening them up to other predators that may be there. So we have to think this is like a big…

LL: Complex situation. Yes I understand. I just got about 30 seconds left and I just want to ask you the same question as Ms. Ens; What do you want Minister Philpott to know? What she and her office consider the best approach to take?

CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX: Well I want her to know about the complexity of it. You can't just descend on these communities and start taking people out because somebody said something about somebody else. You need to put the resources into the healing and prevention. You need to understand that it's not about incarceration, it's about healing these communities and giving them the opportunity to do that work together, and that means putting the resources in the right places. And so the conversation has to begin. It has to be open and it has to be compassionate and supportive. It cannot be punitive.

LL: Thank you very much for your time.

CYNTHIA WESLEY-ESQUIMAUX: Thank you.

LL: Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux holds the chair on Truth and Reconciliation at Lakehead University. She was in Georgina Island, Ontario. Now as I said federal health minister Jane Philpott has been listening in. She'll be in Ottawa this Monday to talk about responses to the suicide epidemic, along with Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins and Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 First Nations communities in Northern Ontario. Minister Philpott joins me now from Winnipeg. Hello.

JANE PHILPOTT: Good morning.

LL: What are your thoughts as you listen to our previous guests describe the lengths between sexual abuse and suicide in Indigenous communities?

JANE PHILPOTT: Well, I have to, first of all, take my hat off to Freda, for her tremendous courage in speaking out so bravely this morning and sharing her story, and recognize how important that is, that she's done that and it was her hope, she said, that she would help at least one person. I think her story will help many, many people because, as she said we have to speak up. We have to help people who have been victims of sexual abuse be able to see another way out, be able to see hope for the future and to be able to get healing and protect themselves against further assaults and further trauma in their lives.

LL: How do you ensure that this issue is addressed by government, rather than something tackled only within the community itself? I'm wondering what specific concrete actions you can take.

JANE PHILPOTT: Well, I think there's a lot of work to be partners together. I have to recognize in this, but I am an outsider. When we're dealing with First Nations communities, for example in Northern Ontario, I I need to enter into the conversation in a way that is highly respectful of the fact that it's my vision of what's going on is limited. And so, I'm always very grateful for people who speak out so boldly and share these very difficult stories because that helps me to understand how we, as a government, can be helpful to them. And I have to say I've been deeply impressed and touched by the courage of many people who have shared similar stories with me. And I've also been impressed with the fact that leaders now are starting to talk in a way that I understand they haven't spoken up in the past. I was at a meeting in North Ontario two weeks ago, at a community town hall, where several people around the table spoke about sexual abuse that had impacted their community. And people said to me after the meeting that that was the first time they'd heard this discussed in an open session. So, I think that's a step forward toward healing, toward giving people like Freda and others courage. They were young girls and boys in the room who heard that conversation and hopefully will see that as an opportunity to say that they've been hurt too.

LL: We asked Deputy Chief, Anna Betty Achneepineskumthere of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, about strategies so far. Here she is.

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Band-Aid solutions keep getting presented and the regress that we have made, in terms of sustainable community based programming and also the resources that we require that specialize in use mental health, they're not there. Until we have those, our numbers will continue.

LL: Minister, that is a very specific request. She says the request for sustainable youth mental health resources aren't being met. What do you say to that?

JANE PHILPOTT: Well, Anna Betty has done fantastic work and she's absolutely right, that this is a critical need. I can tell you that we are scaling up, as quickly as possible, the access to counseling services aiming to quadruple the number of teams of counselors and mental wellness teams, under the leadership of First Nations, that are available in areas like northern Ontario. That can never happen fast enough, especially in situations where there are serious crises of suicides. But I think the other thing that just to realize that the depth of the challenge here, as you heard Freda's talk about the fact when she said what she wanted to talk to me about it was: “Get us jobs, get us better houses, think about our poverty”. And so that spoke out so loudly to me about the urgency of all governments, whether they be federal provincial or first nations governments, working to address these terrible inequities that these communities have lived with. And that's all woven into the complexity of why there's so much hurt and so much trauma and lack of hope for these young people, who are taking their lives.

LL: But you know that these problems have been around for decades.

JANE PHILPOTT: They have been.

LL: And the response has been slow to come. And what you're talking about is a complex coordinated response to the problem. So how do you move quickly to address it on all fronts?

JANE PHILPOTT: Well, I think the meeting that we're having on Monday is an important step forward because what that meeting is involved, it won't just be talking about suicide, we won't just be talking about sexual abuse but I know those topics will come up. Part of what what's needed here is an entirely new approach to the delivery of health care, for example in First Nations communities. It involves things that you touched on earlier in your conversation, like recognizing the rights of indigenous peoples, responding to the calls of action of the truth and reconciliation committee commission and getting the decision making into the hands of the people who are in these communities. And that's very much the theme of the conversation is how can we transfer control of First Nations health to the First Nations leaders and people in communities. They very often, almost always, have the solutions but they don't have the leverage.

LL: Minister, I'm sorry. We're running out of time. We're going to have to leave it there. But I thank you.

JANE PHILPOTT: Thank you. And we certainly hope we will make good progress very quickly.

LL: Jane Philpott is the Federal Health Minister and she was in Winnipeg.

[Music]

LL: I am Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. The news is coming out next.

ENCORE: Parks Canada calls for rat tails and ears to trace rodent's move to Haida Gwaii

Guests: Tyler Peet, Michael Russello, Jason Munshi-South

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Up next, prepare to squirm.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Rats squeaking]

LL: Yes, that's the sound of Rattus Norvegicus,also known as the Norway or Brown Rat. Of course it's not a welcome sound in many places but on Haida Gwaii, the archipelago off the northwestern coast of British Columbia, is an especially dreaded one. The islands are home to an abundance of native species and rats are not one of them. The rodents are believed to have come ashore when boats from Europe first visited the islands, centuries ago. And the rats have been wreaking havoc with native populations ever since. Parks Canada has been working to eradicate the invasive rats, for years. But in March they took their efforts to the next level, asking residents of Prince Rupert, B.C. to bring them the ears and tails of rats.

[Sound: Rat squeaking]

LL: Yes, you heard it right. They want your ears and tails [laughs]. To find out more about this, back in March, I began by talking to Tyler Peet. He's a resource conservation manager for Parks Canada, at Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, and I reached him in Skidegate, B.C. Why are you collecting parts of rats?

TYLER PEET: Well, [laughs] to answer that I think we'd first have to back up to a couple of years ago. We successfully eradicated rats from a number of islands that were historically seabird nesting habitat, specifically the ancient murrelet. It’s a species at risk on the Canadian registry so it's a particular conservation concern. So with the work that's being done in Gwaii Haanas, the Haida Nation and Parks Canada are recognized leaders in this type of conservation. This particular project sought to eradicate rats so that were predating on seabird nests, seabird eggs, the chicks and even at times, nesting adults. So by having successfully gotten rid of those, we're now casting a bit of a further net to try and learn more about the genetic landscape in and around Gwaii Haanas.

LL: So were you able to—I imagine you collected a lot of specimens there on the islands.

TYLER PEET: We did, yeah. For the last two years we've been trapping rats and taking samples. We had about 300, or so, samples total and about 50 of those were from outside Gwaii Haanas, so from local communities. And all the rest came from and around the area of the eradication.

LL: I have this image of you being surrounded by rat tails and rat ears [laughs]. What does it look like?

TYLER PEET: [Laughs]You know that image is probably mostly correct picture; a couple of very dedicated and tolerant technicians working tirelessly here, clipping two centimetre pieces of tails and ears. It’s not a pretty sight.

LL: No, you're right. Very, very tolerant and I guess dedicated people working for you there.

TYLER PEET: You bet. We got nothing but the best.

LL: [Laughs] You talked about the impact the rats had on Haida Gwaiian murrelets and others. So how did you go about trying to eradicate the rats?

TYLER PEET: Well, the eradication itself was done ultimately by an aerial broadcast of a tailor’s made sample of rodenticide.

LL: When you say aerial broadcast, you mean dropping from the air.

TYLER PEET: You bet.

LL: Okay.

TYLER PEET: So picture a helicopter with a gigantic basket that sort of swings back and forth and distributes the pellets across the landscape in a uniform way.

LL: And how well did it work when you started doing that?

TYLER PEET: Oh, we had to play with that technique for a little bit but eventually it was quite effective. So, about a year ago, we announced the success that was based on approximately two years of monitoring for the presence of rats on those islands and we didn't find any. So we were able to declare success on the eradication and now we're monitoring the recovery of the species of interest.

LL: Is the wildlife coming back?

TYLER PEET: It's a little early to tell. However, in the meantime, sorry in the last year or so, the monitoring that we have been done as indicated about a six per cent increase in the presence of ancient murrelets which we are very excited about. It's not the only species to recover. The black oystercatcher—they’re shorebirds which are considered to be a sentinel species so they're sort of the canary in the coal mine in terms of determining ecosystem health. They're also increasing in number.

LL: That's very encouraging for you. What more do you know though about the history of rats on Haida Gwaii?

TYLER PEET: Roughly the first recorded sighting of rats on Haida Gwaii is about the turn of the century the early 1900s. About 1908 in Masset, some rats were seen escaping a ship and then that was at the very, very top end of the archipelago. And then in 1981, some confirmed sightings were recorded down at the southern end of the archipelago. So there's a reason to believe that there are distributed across the entirety. There’s a few exceptions. We have some rat-free islands which are largely free due to a combination of them being too far away to be easily swimmable in distance and also just blind luck of the draw that no vessel that was transporting hitchhikers on board has made a landing there so that rats could disembark and start a colony on those islands.

LL: Well, we are going to be watching along with you to see how the recovery goes and to keep an eye out for any more rats that pop up anywhere. Thank you very much.

TYLER PEET: No problem. In the meantime, we’ll just put out the shout to the residents of Prince Rupert to collect their rat bits and deliver them down to the DFO building at 417-2nd Avenue West.

LL: There, you got the message out. It'll be pouring in. Thank you very much.

TYLER PEET: [laughs] Alright, thanks so much. Have a good day.

LL: Bye-bye.

TYLER PEET: Bye-bye.

LL: Tyler Peet is resource conservation manager for Parks Canada at Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and he is in Skidegate, BC. Well, all of those pieces of ears and tails end up in the laboratory of Michael Russello. He's a professor of biology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. He is in Kelowna. Hello.

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: Hello, Laura.

LL: Now you get the bits and parts of the rats and then what happens?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: We look forward to receiving them. So the first thing that we do is extract the DNA from them and then we'll be sequencing the bits of the genome to better understand the history of the population and how the rats are moving through Haida Gwaii.

LL: So what questions are you trying to answer by looking at the genome?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: A couple of questions. First, where did the rats originally come from? And this is where linking up with the Fordham group led by Jason Munshi-South will be quite important. But primarily for the management purposes, we're interested in how the rats are moving through the system. How far can they go in terms of traversing the sea and moving from one landmass to another? How frequently do they do this?? And all this plays into the design of management plans for hopefully eradicating the rats.

LL: So how do you go about doing that?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: We'll be using the genetic data to understand first off how closely related the populations are on the various islands. And from that we can get a sense of how frequently they will move between islands. So for example, Parks Canada goes out and identifies a priority area. We would want to know if rats can easily recolonize that island from a neighbouring source or if it's fairly isolated.

LL: How difficult is all that going to be to determine just from genetic material?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: You know the genetic material is really the ideal way of doing it in an efficient way. The history of the population is recorded in the DNA and the history of the individuals as well. We can tell recent migrants for example, individuals moving from one place to another. And again we can use it to reconstruct how frequently that might occur.

LL: That's interesting. How can you tell when something is a recent migrant? Is the DNA just that slightly different?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: Well, that's where sampling a large number of markers in the genome really is an advantage. And so we can begin to assign individuals to one population or the other. And if you know we are fortunate enough with our sampling we can actually potentially detect individuals that originate from one population moving to a new area.

LL: So obviously I would think that you don’t just need the clippings of ears and tails. Don't you also need to know where they were found?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: Yes. So in addition to the genetic material, we hope to use all available information. And one of the most important pieces of information is where exactly was that individual sampled?

LL: Right. So the fact that we're dealing with an island though, that would seem to me to make it easier because it should be isolated from everything else. Is that true?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: It is true and all of the samples are collected by Parks Canada and specifically for the project. And so they'll go out. They'll set up traps. So it's fairly straightforward for them to record you know where, when and to take a sample of the tail or the ear.

LL: And I know we may be getting into this in other ways but if there were rats on an island—I guess that may be one of the things you're trying to find out—would rats be able to come from other islands in Haida Gwaii? They’re typically easy routes between the two.

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: Absolutely. And so, for example, if in eradication attempt is made on a particular island, the follow-up monitoring we’ll want to know is if a rat is detected on an island or an eradication had happened in the recent past, is it because the eradication wasn't complete and individuals were missed on that island? Or did it come from a neighbouring island? And so if we can provide that information at the beginning, then it will tie in directly to how Parks Canada targets an area and surrounding areas for management.

LL: Okay. I want to bring another person into the conversation. Jason Munshi-South is an associate professor in the department of biological sciences at Fordham University and he is researching the global travel patterns of rats. Michael Russello’s work is part of that research. Jason Munshi-South is in New York City. Hello.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Hi. How are you?

LL: Fine, thanks. How surprised are you that the Gwaii Haanas Park has experienced this kind of an infestation?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: I'm not really surprised because if you look around the world, this particular species of rat occurs on nearly every land mass around the world, the only exceptions being Antarctica and parts of the Arctic if you get far enough north. So this is really one of the most successful mammals in terms of spreading itself around the world.

LL: Okay. Well, let's get the terminology out of the way first. This rat, it's commonly known as the Norway rat.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: That's right. And the scientific name is Rattus Norvegicus. It doesn't actually originate in Norway but it may have spread from Norway into some other European countries or Great Britain which is why they have this particular name.

LL: It has other kinds of I guess nicknames: brown rat, sewer rat. Correct?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: That's right, brown rat, sewer rat, city rat. It's the rat you commonly see in northern cities, in subway systems, coming out of sewers, eating garbage on the street, burrowing in parks, that sort of thing.

LL: I'm sure other people have other names for it. Your work started in New York City but how did you come to research the global travel of rats?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Well, we were originally interested in a very similar question as to what's happening in Haida Gwaii. Our question was where did where did rats in New York City originate from? And to answer that question I began contacting colleagues around the world and asking them to send us samples from rats from cities where their universities were located or other adjacent areas. And it turned out we found so many people studying rats around the world that we were able to look at sort of the global picture of how the species migrated, beginning where it originated and then spread throughout all these different landmasses.

LL: So where is ground zero for rats?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: It seems that the brown rat originated in northern China or Mongolia and its earliest migrations were through East Asia and down into Southeast Asia. That was the initial movement.

LL: Okay. So they started in China. How did they begin to migrate out of there? Do you know what the reasons were? What they were biologically trying to accomplish?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: We don't know for sure but it seems that that's around the time they evolve to be commensal with humans which means they were living with us and living off of our resources. And so it's likely that they evolved to take advantage of human agriculture and grain storage initially and then they spread throughout villages and towns and later cities in Asia in their behaviour of living with humans. And then their next big migration was very slow. It carried them across all of Eurasia through the Central Asian states and eventually into Eastern Europe sometime in the 1500s and then we have good records of them spreading to the rest of northern and Western Europe by the 1700s. And once they arrived in Europe is when they kind of exploded. They arrived at just the right time to be moved around by ships that were sailing from Europe engaging in colonial activity, international trade, war and so forth and so that's when the rat really spread around the rest of the world.

LL: And at every single step it was more or less in step with human movement.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: That's right. It's unlikely that this route was naturalized in forests or other native habitats at this time to a large degree. They were largely tracking the movements of humans and living in our towns, cities and agricultural areas.

LL: How quickly did and do they reproduce? I mean you talk about the populations exploding. How quickly does that happen?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Well, they're exquisitely evolved for rapid reproduction. So you know they can become sexually mature in a matter of weeks. The same female can have several litters in a year. And so you're talking about exponential growth once they get into an area with favourable conditions. And they survive quite well on transport ships and so forth so they can survive relatively long voyages and then if they get out at their destination, then they can quickly establish themselves in new areas.

LL: Which is why you always hear that phrase that there are more rats in New York City than people.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Yeah, that's right. I think probably somewhat of a myth that there are certainly at least hundreds of thousands of rats, if not a few million in New York City.

LL: But what is the impact of the rats on local habitats when they do arrive? They become so dominant.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Right. Well, in urban areas they are largely a problem because they degrade infrastructure. They'll shoot holes in walls. They'll chew on wires. They can spread diseases like leptospirosis in their urine and droppings. They get into garbage. In more natural areas when they arrive, they can—especially on the islands which tend to be sensitive and the animals may or may not have very many predators—they can become quite an issue because they will actually become something like predators. They'll eat chicks of birds. They’ll eat eggs. They may even attack adult individuals and so they can be very destructive towards the local fauna.

LL: Well, that seems a good time to bring Michael Russello back into this. When it comes to Haida Gwaii as we heard from Parks Canada, the negative impact of the rats was pretty clear. So what is the final goal of your research?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: Well, the impetus for all of this initially was for the protection of the nesting seabird species in Haida Gwaii that have just been devastated, in some cases even extirpated from islands. And we're talking about ancient murrelets and cassin's auklet and fork-tailed storm petrels and a host of other shorebird species. But it also will help with the restoration of the native ecosystems as well. So that really is the end goal of all this work.

LL: How likely do you think it is that you're actually going to be able to make Haida Gwaii rat-free?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: Well, that would be the ultimate goal. And like so many other big picture goals, it will require will and resources, so both for eradicating the rats that are there but then also preventing future introductions.

LL: Actually as you know working with Jason when it comes to your Haida Gwaii study, how is the work in BC going to contribute to the global study?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: Well, it will hopefully add some more geographic range to this already quite impressive dataset and initiative. It was really important for us to be able to collect our data in a way that could feed into Jason's work and to take advantage of it and its geographic scope.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: I can add a little bit to that if you'd like.

LL: Sure, Jason. Go ahead.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: So getting back to these rats moving around the world, it seems that they got to eastern North America sometime in the 1750s and then the west coast—the west coast of North America and British Columbia—potentially around the same time. But there was a migration of rats from the east coast across the entire North American continent over to the west coast while simultaneously rats were being introduced to the west coast. And our genetic results indicate the east coast rats came from Western Europe. But what was a really big surprise in our study was that the west coast of North America—California, British Columbia, Alaska—these rats were a mixture of lineages that came from Western Europe and this likely came across North America from the east and then rats from Asia. And so British Columbia is a very interesting area for the history of the species because there were two major migrations combining in this area and so by studying Haida Gwaii, we’ll understand this process better and hopefully that information will help deal with the problem on Haida Gwaii. If there are rats still being introduced, we can potentially identify what lineages they’re coming from.

LL: Does that also mean that we here in BC are lucky enough to own a unique kind of rat population?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: It is true in some sense is that you have this you know sort of composite population of immigrant rats that have combined to be something unique, genetically compared to the populations elsewhere in the world.

LL: Okay, Jason. I want to get into this, the whole idea of rats that do get a bad rap. You talked about disease before but we all think of them as being spreaders of pestilence and disease and the Black Plague in the 14th century. Does that hold up?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Well, the Black Plague was actually spread potentially by a different rat that got to Europe earlier and that's the black rat. And the black rat was spread around the world earlier because it did better on ships and was picked up first. But the Norway rat seems to outcompete that rat and so it displaced it from much of the world. Coastal cities in British Columbia still have both species but the Norway rat has become more common in most areas and is a dominant species.

LL: Are you suggesting that rats are our friend then because they're keeping the bad rats out? [laughs]

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Well, I would say that they’re both bad [laughs]. The Norway rat, while it’s not implicated in the plague which is now easily treatable with antibiotics, they do spread other diseases. They can contaminate food with things like salmonella, E. coli. They can spread leptospirosis.

LL: What is leptospirosis?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Leptospirosis is a bacterial infection that is spread in rat urine and in humans it particularly infects the kidney. And it can be treated with antibiotics but if it's not, then it can cause serious damage in some individuals. It's also becoming more common as an infection in dogs. So when people are walking their pet dogs in areas where rats are active and the dog walks through a puddle or even drinks out of a puddle, they get exposed to this disease. So it's not a trivial thing. I wouldn't say rats are low or zero risk for spreading disease. There's still a public health issue in a lot of ways.

LL: Michael Russello, here's your chance. And I'm going to ask Jason after this. What do you think? Is there anything to love about rats or like?

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: [chuckles] Well, you know from the vantage point where we are now and seeing the impacts to biodiversity and to all the other elements that Jason talked about, I have trouble finding too many redeeming qualities other than their intrinsic value as part of the world's biodiversity.

LL: Okay. Jason, you've devoted your career to studying rats. Do you love anything about them? Is there anything that we can say that's truly positive?

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: Well, I'm interested in rodents in general and rats are really interesting just because they are kind of like, if you look at humans compared to other primates, they're the one species that’s just really made it. And it’s figured something out. It’s evolved a strategy that is ultimately successful and they will likely be around for thousands, if not millions of years moving into the future. So their adaptability, their intelligence, you know it's all very impressive. Obviously it's an intolerable situation when you have rats living in and around your home. But you know you have to admire them in some way as a survivor.

LL: Well, there you go. They will outlast us all. Thank you to both of you.

JASON MUNSHI-SOUTH: You're welcome.

MICHAEL RUSSELLO: My pleasure.

LL: From March of this year that was my conversation with Michael Rusello, a professor of biology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. He was in Kelowna, and Jason Munshi-South is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Fordham University in New York. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for a new episode of The Current summer series The Disruptors. This week it's disruptors in the kitchen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE: Welcome to the French Chef. I'm Julia Child. You know, the ant can be your best friend if you just give it the right break.

LL: Julia Child is just one of the food world disruptors you're going to hear about so stay tuned for that. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It is free from the App Store or Google Play. And finally, after hearing all about rats a little music to win things off, here are the White Stripes with I Think I Smell a Rat. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to this summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Song - I Think I Smell a Rat]

Oh! I think I smell a rat

Using your mother and father for a welcome mat

Oh I think I smell a rat

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July 21, 2017 full episode transcript

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