No more rats on Dog Island

Bird numbers and other wildlife populations are starting to recover on Dog Island in Anguilla in the Caribbean, following an intensive five-month programme to eradicate black rats and two years of careful monitoring.

Covering 207 hectares, the island is the largest Caribbean island to be successfully cleared of non-native rats to protect the island’s threatened wildlife.

Dog Island is an internationally-recognised Important Bird Area, with over 100,000 pairs of nesting seabirds. It also supports lizards found nowhere else on earth and endangered sea turtles, which nest on the island’s white sandy beaches.

However prior to November 2011 the island was also infested with thousands of invasive, non-native black rats, which caused severe damage by suppressing native flora and preying on eggs, chicks, and other animals.

The eradication took place between November 2011 and March 2012 and was a collaborative initiative among the Anguilla National Trust, the Government of Anguilla (Department of Environment), Fauna & Flora International, the RSPB, and the island’s owner– the Anguilla Development Company.

Continued

Caribbean Seabird Tracking Pilot Study Gives Encouraging Results

Dog Island IBA is an uninhabited offshore islet lying northwest of the Caribbean UK Overseas Territory (UKOT) of Anguilla, and is considered to be the second most important individual island for seabirds in the eastern Caribbean, despite being only about 200 ha in size. It forms part of Anguilla’s Important Bird Area (IBA) network, and has globally important populations of Brown Booby Sula leucogaster and regionally important colonies of Laughing Gull Larus atricilla, Magnificent Frigatebird Fregata magnificens, Sooty Tern Sterna fuscata and Masked Booby Sula dactylatra.

In April 2012, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (BirdLife in the United Kingdom), in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and the Anguilla National Trust, conducted a Brown Booby tracking project, with the aims of determining the preferred feeding locations and foraging behaviour of this important population. Nineteen birds were successfully tracked over a period of 5-7 days using GPS data loggers. Maps of foraging flights could then be downloaded and revealed average foraging trip durations of just over 5 hours with an average distance travelled of 110km but some individuals travelling up to 300km on a round trip!

Continued: http://www.birdlife.org/community/2012/09/caribbean-seabird-tracking-pilot-study-gives-encouraging-results/