Project to eradicate
non-native brown rats that feed on eggs and chicks on St Agnes and Gugg is
declared a success
Press Association
Saturday 13 February
2016 00.01 GMTLast modified on Monday 15 February 201611.04 GMT
A project to protect
breeding seabirds from invasive rats on the Scilly Isles has been a success
with the two islands declared “rat-free”.
Bird populations on St
Agnes and Gugh, linked by a sand bar, are starting to recover after a quarter
century of year-on-year declines following work to eradicate the non-native
brown rats which were feeding on eggs and chicks, conservationists said.
They are thought to have
first colonised the islands in the 18th century following several shipwrecks
and grew to a population that was harmful to birds such as European
storm-petrels (Hydrobates pelagicus) and Manx shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus),
which have been in decline since the 1980s.
Local volunteers and
conservationists began work in 2013 on a project to monitor rat activity on the
island, followed by an intensive programme of baiting and poisoning for a month
in the winter. No rats have been spotted since November 2013, and after a
thorough month-long inspection at the beginning of this year the islands have
been declared officially “rat-free”.
Since the removal of the
rats, both Manx shearwaters and European storm-petrels are successfully
breeding on the islands for the first time in living memory, conservationists
said, with more than 40 chicks recorded on the islands in the last two years.
No comments:
Post a Comment