Rat birth control program touted as success in Chicago's Wicker Park, Bucktown communities

A rat birth control maker touted the success of its product in Chicago's Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods on Monday.

Rodent birth control maker and sustainable rat population company SenesTech Inc. introduced its Evolve Rat Birth Control to Wicker Park Bucktown Special Service Area #33 in a pilot program. The Special Service Area is a taxpayer-funded business improvement district that includes parts of Western Avenue, Damen Avenue, Ashland Avenue, Milwaukee Avenue, North Avenue, and Division Street.

SenesTech reported that over a period of a year, the program showed an 88% reduction in average rat activity intensity and an 82% reduction in the proportion of monitoring locations where rat activity was detected.

The commercial corridors in Wicker Park Bucktown SSA #33 are among the busiest in the city, and SenesTech said rats were ruining the well-maintained landscapes there. They were burrowing into landscape beds and tree pits, damaging perennial plantings, and costing thousands of dollars in landscape maintenance.

The SSA brought in Evolve into its integrated pest management program in August 2025 to deal with the problem. Unlike most pest control solutions, Evolve does not kill rats, but rather targets reproduction.

The bait is safe around pets and humans.

The SSA put out 190 Evolve bait stations across about 2 miles of the district, focusing on alleys and landscape beds where rats were seen most often. Beginning in August of last year, rat tracking tunnel surveys were conducted every two to three months, measuring rat activity intensity on a scale of 0 to 3 based on how many footprints were seen in  tunnels and how widely activity was distributed across the 190 stations.

In August of last year, rat activity was found at 74% of the monitoring stations. By July 2026, that figure had fallen to 13%.

Rat activity scores also fell from 1.76 to 0.21, with the largest reduction in flower beds and tree pits, where the scores fell from 1.97 to 0.13, SenesTech said. Activity remained low in the warmer parts of spring and the summer, SenesTech said.

Rodent-related 911 calls within the deployment area fell 36%, from 158 in the year before Evolve was deployed to 101 in the year afterward. Citywide, rat-related 911 calls increased by a faction of a percent.

CBS News Chicago covered the deployment of the program last year. Alice Howe, program director for SSA #33, said the "sausage-like" Evolve product contains cotton seed oil, which is the active ingredient that inhibits fertility in rats. Howe said this approach is being used in Baltimore and will be launching in New York and San Francisco.

For decades, the city has focused on urging people to help reduce the rat population by securing garbage cans to limit their food supply, and placing rodenticide in rat burrows.

The city regularly posts warnings in alleys urging people to securely close their garbage cans, reminding people "if rats can't breed, rats can't breed." But most people in Chicago probably didn't give an ounce of thought to rat fertility until Evolve was deployed.

"When you say, 'rodent birth control,' I think it was on 'Saturday Night Live,' they were cracking jokes about little condoms and things like that. You really have to think into the science of the product. It does work," Bryan Dimenna, vice president of sales at SenesTech, said last year.

In 2024, "Saturday Night Live" alums Dana Carvey and David Spade addressed rat birth control in their "Superfly" podcast. Spade pointed out that rat birth control reduces fertility in male and female rats and added, "It's about time the guys have to deal with it." Rat birth control has also come up on "Weekend Update" on contemporary SNL, and was addressed in a "Meanwhile" segment on CBS' "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" earlier this year.

Amid all the jokes, Evolve has now expanded to six SSAs, and wards, also including Old Town SSA #48 and Albany Park SSA #60.

Our goal has always been to make Wicker Park cleaner, safer, and more enjoyable for everyone who lives, works, and visits here," Howe said in a news release. "Evolve gave us a long-term tool that aligns with that vision by helping us manage rodent populations while protecting the public spaces our community invests in."

The team from SenesTech said the company also works with popular zoos, theme parks, and food manufacturers all over the country.