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UK’s South Georgia says bye to rats
Eric Hopton for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Tony Martin, from Scotland’s University of Dundee, is a man with a plan and he has rats in his sight. Tony is Project Director of the South Georgia Habitat Restoration program, a five year program which is eradicating the rat population on South Georgia to protect local wildlife. Tony and his team are heading down to the beautiful but remote islands – a UK overseas territory down in the wild South Atlantic.
Planning and preparations are complete. The ship is loaded with a hundred tons of poisoned rat bait. More helicopters and bait to be used in the rat eradication project are already in the Falklands waiting to be picked up. There have been two previous field operations but Team Rat hopes that this could be the last time they need to head south. In his latest Newsletter, Tony says, “If all goes according to plan, and we get half-decent weather, within a few months we will be dropping the last bait pellet on the southernmost part of South Georgia still infested with rodents, and the hard part of our extraordinary 5-year challenge will be complete.”
But there is still a lot that can go wrong. What lies ahead is “a long and arduous field season, hundreds of hours of difficult flying, the hand-loading of well over 4,000 heavy bags of bait with a noisy helicopter hovering just overhead, and of course whatever the weather gods deem fit to throw at us.” But Phase 1 of the operation in 2011 and Phase 2 in 2013 were highly successful and Tony believes this will be the final part of the mission.
This third phase will treat 360 square kilometers in the south of the island. Eleven different zones were baited in 2013. The team knew that statistically it was likely that one or more treatments could fail. So they are prepared to ‘mop up’ survivors in 2015. At present there is no evidence of any such treatment failure, but the areas will be checked and re-baited if necessary.
The team hopes to begin spreading bait around February 15.
Tony told the BBC that South Georgia is a “magical piece of UK territory.” “The islands are,” he said, “home to a great wealth of wildlife that exploits the hugely productive seas. Man came along some 200 years ago and messed it up by bringing rats and mice.”
Much of the native wildlife of South Georgia has no defense against the rats. Many bird species have been devastated by the rat invasion and up to 90 percent of South Georgia’s breeding seabirds have been lost. Even the giant Wandering Albatross has suffered from rat predation on their nests and eggs. The tiny Wilson’s storm petrel was in danger of disappearing completely as a breeding species on the islands.
Though the team are optimistic that this will be their last rat-killing expedition to South Georgia, it could be ten years before they know for sure that the last rat has gone.
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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113320970/south-georgia-says-bye-to-rat-problem-012615/
