Rabies bait drop showing success in Niagara

Incidents of disease decline over four years

The province dropped vaccine baits from a plane over west Niagara Thursday in its continuing war on wildlife rabies that’s led to large reductions of the disease in recent years.

The Ministry of Natural Resources was releasing 12,000 vaccine baits over Lincoln — part of a batch of 1.4 million baits being dropped across southern Ontario, including throughout Niagara, Hamilton, Kitchener, Brantford and more.

“We’re hopefully winning the fight,” ministry spokeswoman said Jolanta Kowalski said.

She said rabies cases have dropped in Ontario by about 50 per cent each year since 2016.

That’s attributed to the ministry’s blanket approach that involves an aerial drop of oral rabies vaccines for raccoons, skunks and foxes throughout southern, southwest and eastern Ontario along with hand baiting in areas that can’t be reached by air.

A rabies outbreak began in 2015 when a raccoon tested positive in the Hamilton area. It was the first case of raccoon rabies in more than a decade and the first in southwestern Ontario. More cases were then identified, including 12 cases involving raccoons and skunks in Niagara in 2016.

“We’ve been pretty successful since the outbreak in 2015,” Kowalski said. “We’ve been able to contain the original outbreak to within 65 kilometres of the initial case.”

Niagara Public Health reported 19 cases of rabies in 2018, involving 10 raccoons, seven skunks and two bats. That was down from 21 cases in 2017.

So far this year, there have only been three confirmed cases — one skunk in Welland, a dog in Wainfleet and a bat in St. Catharines. There’s no baiting program for bats, as they feed on flying insects, not baits.

“Certainly the numbers have gone down but the risk is still out there, which is why they’re continuing with the baiting program,” said Peter Jekel, Niagara Region’s manager of environmental health.

“They’ll continue to do that until such time as we nip this thing in the bud.”

Jekel said the Region is still getting cases from the Hamilton area that are spilling into Niagara.

The ministry started aerial drops in late August and will continue until early October, while hand baiting began in July.

Kowalski said the rabies vaccine looks like a khaki-green puck, the size of a pack of gum, and contains non-hazardous food grade components such as fats, wax, icing sugar, vegetable oil, artificial marshmallow flavour and soluble die.

She said it is designed to immunize wild animals when eaten, not domestic pets, though it won’t harm people or pets if consumed by accident. People should contact a doctor or vet as a precaution if that happens.

The ministry encourages everyone to keep their pets’ rabies vaccinations up to date through their veterinarians to avoid problems.

“It’s such an easy thing to prevent,” she said. “Get the vaccine and you don’t have to worry about your pet encountering a wild animal and dying,” she said.

The ministry provides information about rabies in Ontario on its website at Ontario.ca/rabies or at its rabies information line at 1-888-574-6656.