{"id":360551,"date":"2025-08-20T22:53:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T22:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/360551\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T22:53:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T22:53:14","slug":"millisle-beach-poison-bait-to-be-used-at-popular-co-down-beach-after-rodents-infest-shores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/360551\/","title":{"rendered":"Millisle Beach: \u2018Poison bait\u2019 to be used at popular Co Down beach after rodents \u2018infest\u2019 shores"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents of Millisle recently came together to clear litter and seaweed from their local beach<\/a>, following a community cleanup organised earlier this month by Deborah Mann.<\/p>\n

But residents said beach continued to be plagued by large rats.<\/p>\n

Ards and North Down Borough Council has now confirmed plans to use poison and target areas where rodent activity is believed to be high.<\/p>\n

In a statement on social media, the council said: \u201cFollowing growth in the rodent population at Millisle Beach, a pest control programme will begin on Thursday 21 August and run for 2-3 weeks.<\/p>\n

“Poison bait will be used on the site to target known burrows.<\/p>\n

\u201cSignage will be in place to advise beach users and Council Officers will be visiting the site over the coming days to engage with beach users and give advice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visitors are advised to keep pets on a leash, supervise children at all times, take any food waste away and not feed the birds.<\/p>\n

The council advised contacting the Emergency Department \u2013 or a vet for pets \u2013 if accidental poisoning occurs.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph earlier this month, Deborah explained how members of the local community worked \u201ctirelessly\u201d to clean up the town.<\/p>\n

A resident of Millisle for over 40 years, Deborah was prompted by her husband Gary to post a notice on Facebook to organise a village beach clean.<\/p>\n

Efforts to tidy the beach then moved on to improving the general surroundings, with John McLean (80) taking to weeding the surrounding area.<\/p>\n

However, despite their good intentions to clean up the beach, they initially received pushback from the council. <\/p>\n

Grievances were initially raised due to environmental issues and wildlife concerns<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beach is now infested with rats. Council kept saying it is not allowed to be touched because it is an environmental issue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout a week later a couple of the guys decided to get together and de-weed the whole Main Street, it was also cleared of rubbish. They tirelessly worked for hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few days after that, a few professional painters gave up their time and painted a couple of derelict buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deborah added: \u201cI then started a GoFundMe, within two days it went from a \u00a3400 target to \u00a33,400. Every single penny is going towards the cleaning and restoration efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe council has actually given us the bags now to help clean up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents of Millisle recently came together to clear litter and seaweed from their local beach, following a community…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[5824,1384,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-360551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-ards-and-north-down-borough-council","9":"tag-down-news","10":"tag-northern-ireland","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115063554496111955","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}