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.
