Joe Abercrombie did not plan to start a pest control company. While studying environmental sustainability at UBC in 2015, a contract for pest control work exposed him to an industry whose standard model conflicted directly with everything he had been studying.
"I realized that the pervasive model is to convert pest and wildlife conflicts into sources of recurring revenue, not to solve the issue quickly while prioritizing clients' budgets and animal welfare," he explains. "I got a truck, made a website, and got going."
That decision became Humane Solutions Inc. — now the only pest and wildlife company in BC that is 100% rodenticide-free and can demonstrate a permanent-results methodology across a client base that ranges from homeowners to government agencies.
A Different Starting Point
Most pest control companies start with a product: a pesticide, a trap type, a spray program. Humane Solutions starts with a structure.
"Rodents don't just magically appear because there are crumbs behind your stove," Abercrombie explains. "There are access points on your structure letting them in. The structure itself is a resource. Would you pay a roofer to return weekly to change the bucket under a roof leak? No — you demand a permanent result."
This principle — address root causes before applying control methods — defines the company's approach to every engagement, from a residential rat call to a multi-year government wildlife program.
Growing Into High-Profile Work
A significant and growing segment of the business focuses on innovative wildlife management: beaver coexistence programs, predator monitoring and response, and specialized training services for industry and government. These services are in demand across Canada — Humane Solutions regularly consults and deploys outside the Lower Mainland for engagements that require specialized methodology not available elsewhere.
"By marrying older skills born from the fur trade and construction techniques with modern safety and due diligence processes, we are in a league of our own," says Abercrombie.
Recognition
The 2021 business awards confirmed what the client base already knew: Humane Solutions swept the category, claiming top positions in the Consumer Choice Award, Top Choice Award, and Canadian Best Businesses. The recognition reflects not just service quality but the growing market demand for an approach that delivers permanent results and treats animal welfare as a non-negotiable design constraint, not a marketing add-on.
The company continues to expand, with ambitions that extend beyond wildlife management into broader social impact — reflecting an organizational philosophy that measures success by the problems permanently solved, not the revenue generated by problems that persist.