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Large Island Declared Rat-Free in Biggest Removal Success (nationalgeographic.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A remote, freezing, salt-spray lashed paradise for wildlife has been completely cleared of rats in the largest rodent eradication of all time, the South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT) announced this week. Rats are smart, adaptable, and hungry. For all these reasons, they can be incredibly voracious predators when people accidentally introduce them to remote islands, where the local animals lack evolved defenses to rodents. They have flourished even on an island as harsh and cold as South Georgia, which is so far south that it hosts penguins, elephant seals, and fur seals, as well as massive permanent glaciers.
"There are no trees, there are no bushes. All nest on the ground or underground in burrows," says Mike Richardson, Chairman of the SGHT Habitat Restoration Project Steering Committee. Such nests are easy pickings for rats. The rats -- brought to the island by whalers and sealers as early as the late 18th century -- ate the eggs and vulnerable chicks of seabirds, including albatrosses, skua, terns, and petrels. They also threatened two birds with extinction that are found nowhere else in the world: the South Georgia Pipit -- a tiny speckled songbird -- and the South Georgia Pintail, a brown duck.
The rat eradication was a massive, arduous undertaking, costing more than $13 million and taking nearly a decade. More than 300 metric tons of poison bait was dropped on the island by helicopter in three separate trips during the Austral Summers of 2010-2011, 2012-2013, and 2014-2015. Poisoned rats tend to head underground to die, Richardson says, limiting the damage caused to birds like gulls that might have otherwise eaten the poison-tainted carcasses.
"There are no trees, there are no bushes. All nest on the ground or underground in burrows," says Mike Richardson, Chairman of the SGHT Habitat Restoration Project Steering Committee. Such nests are easy pickings for rats. The rats -- brought to the island by whalers and sealers as early as the late 18th century -- ate the eggs and vulnerable chicks of seabirds, including albatrosses, skua, terns, and petrels. They also threatened two birds with extinction that are found nowhere else in the world: the South Georgia Pipit -- a tiny speckled songbird -- and the South Georgia Pintail, a brown duck.
The rat eradication was a massive, arduous undertaking, costing more than $13 million and taking nearly a decade. More than 300 metric tons of poison bait was dropped on the island by helicopter in three separate trips during the Austral Summers of 2010-2011, 2012-2013, and 2014-2015. Poisoned rats tend to head underground to die, Richardson says, limiting the damage caused to birds like gulls that might have otherwise eaten the poison-tainted carcasses.
french toast, m'ladies
(tips fedora knowingly)
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you ever knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
A volcano will do that!
Weasel Island is still open. Visit The Civil War prison and the amusement park.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Does this work on illegal aliens?
sea level approaching.. we civilized 2 legged rats plead immunity & insanity at once? some still calling this 'weather'? cease fire stand down, there are moms & kids in all of our towns the world around... that's the spirit..
So for nearly a decade, there has been aerial dumping of poison in excess of 300 tons to kill rats, who ingest it and burrow in the ground and die? Ok, so when the SGHT is done with their High-Five tail pipe party about seagulls picking at a few carcasses, I'd be curious to know when they perform their next study of the impacts of millions of rodents that ate all that poison (or didn't) and it leeched back into the ocean? That can't be good. Talk about trying to solve one problem and causing a domino effect of others.
...that's oxymoronic as HELL.
Can you do the Whitehouse next?
...
It had to be rats...
The introduction of touch screens, tablets, and smart pens has greatly reduced their ecosystem. Should mice be considered at danger of extinction ?
We introduced an invasive species and then destroyed them again at some cost to the environment. I hope it's clear that the villain in this story was not the rats.
Took care of that in November of 2016.
See subject: A butthurt RAT has been impersonating me for MONTHS and it's PISSING me off. It's infuriating to see an anonymous UNIDENTIFIABLE TROLL pretending to be me on a daily basis and it needs to STOP. He is RAGING that I repeatedly dusted him on computer security and bump stocks.
* This weekend, I will be posting in many Slashdot stories with important information including the identity of my IMPOSTER. I have investigated which butthurt do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" is responsible for the impersonation and have found conclusive evidence. I will reveal the identity of this SOYBOY WEASEL in my posts over the weekend.
I will also be discussing why BUMP STOCKS must be BANNED and why my security software cures more security problems than ANY OTHER SOLUTION. Plus, I will provide enlightening information on important topics like SOY IN MILK causing men to become EFFEMINATE and how the VATICAN CONSPIRED with Democrats to rig the US election.
APK
P.S.=> To the rat impersonating me: GROW UP. Your time for anonymous trolling is just about over... apk
See subject: A butthurt RAT has been impersonating me for MONTHS and it's PISSING me off. It's infuriating to see an anonymous UNIDENTIFIABLE TROLL pretending to be me on a daily basis and it needs to STOP. He is RAGING that I repeatedly dusted him on computer security and bump stocks.
* This weekend, I will be posting in many Slashdot stories with important information including the identity of my IMPOSTER. I have investigated which butthurt do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" is responsible for the impersonation and have found conclusive evidence. I will reveal the identity of this SOYBOY WEASEL in my posts over the weekend.
I will also be discussing why BUMP STOCKS must be BANNED and why my security software cures more security problems than ANY OTHER SOLUTION. Plus, I will provide enlightening information on important topics like SOY IN MILK causing men to become EFFEMINATE and how the VATICAN CONSPIRED with Democrats to rig the US election.
APK
P.S.=> To the rat impersonating me: GROW UP. Your time for anonymous trolling is just about over... apk
Science denier!
I've heard of them, but I've never actually seen one in real life, since I live in Alberta, a province free of rats.
Of course, we're not really a "removal success" since we kept them out in the first place.
I stole this Sig
Got way too many rats in the White House. Must purge. Poison sounds too easy unless very slooooow acting. Must preserve sanctity of White House and Cabinet. Trump has got the powa! to make this happen. Make. It. Happen.
naturally Rat Island is in the Bronx. How can you mock what people own up to right up front?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In principle, stronger species replacing weaker ones is what evolution is about. Who are we to exterminate the species that succeeded? Even if we played some initial role in introducing them, it's their own fitness that got them to great numbers. Maybe intelligent successors of hardy rats will do archeological research on slashdot archives long after humans offed themselves of perished in a natural disaster. In the meantime, rat meat is eaten in a lot of cultures and rats can obviously be raised in great numbers without intense agricultural practices. If reduction in numbers is desired, opening these islands to commercial trapping/hunting seems less wasteful than dropping lots of poison.
What ever the rats were eating may now end up with a massive increase in population, and the excreta that the rats generated had to be fertilizing something, so at least one other species won't do as well, and there will be knock on effects from that.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
rats gone. now lets do the same with muslims in the west
Just imagine how much rat cake, rat sorbet, rat pudding, or strawberry tart that could have made!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I've read this headline several times. My biggest question is, where is this taking place?
Southern Georgia
Southern Georgia
Apparently it's South Georgia. Which I thought I had never heard of, but my browser's search history tells me otherwise.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Let's eradicate the rats in the various capitals. We need lobbyists with poison checks, that should be the right bait.
What ever the rats were eating may now end up with a massive increase in population..
Well... yeah. That was the entire point of the project.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The summary and a nice excerpt from linked articles by Okian Warrior above pretty well says that the rats were so voraciously feeding on the eggs of indigenous birds that they were driving them to the edge of extinction. I sure hope that there are indeed knock on effects, like rebound of the affected species!
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
They had lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
We were down in South Georgia a couple of years ago and the locals were talking about the various eradication programs.
Some time ago, reindeer were introduced in an attempt to create some sort of farming/hunting but of course the reindeer denuded the local grasses to the detriment of indigenous creatures. Culling the reindeer is a sight easier than culling rats, just needs a couple of guys with rifles.
We actually saw the last of a small reindeer herd in one of the bays, peacefully grazing.
My first thought was they'd be back on the next boat in, but if the bait actually worked (rats are incredibly suspicious and I'd have figured them to strongly prefer eggs) and there's a lot left, there's nothing alive on the island that's adapted.
It would have been much easier and cheaper: (Skyfall Rat Scene) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Hawaii is attempting a novel method for rat eradication right now. While effective against rats, it seems to also be eradicating homes. Collateral damage is always a risk...
Or even better: all the human parasites from MENA.
... so not so rat free.
Yes, I'm Argentinian. Now, get off my island, you insensitive clod!
Now that they've finished exterminating the Largest Rats, can we talk about those Rodents of Unusual Size?
Have gnu, will travel.
They were eating seabirds, which are famous for fertilizing shorelines with their excreta. There may be a population explosion of seabirds, but since their feeding occurs out in a vast ocean, their increased presence will be a drop in the bucket.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I hope so, they are just as bad.
Its about as far south as Glasgow is north.
in the United States. Oops that was racist. I meant to say if we could only do this for WHITE people in the United States. Now the statement is no longer racist.
It wonder that the political correct class has no problem with the complete genocide of a species. It also wonder that the SPCA is so encouraging of spray and neuter clinics but as soon as you mention Eugenics people start going crazy.
Go figure. I am an alien living in a strange world i do not understand
In Your Dreams . . .
and what, two weeks later the infestation returns, but The War On Rats gets to claim its been successful?
the parallels, amazing.
Alberta has already been rat-free for 50 years. Source: National Geographic, same as this story, so you would think they would have gotten their facts straight. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0331_030331_rats_2.html
I would be damn impressed if Long Island, NY was made rat-free but I was going to ask if that included Queens and Brooklyn too.
What ever the rats were eating may now end up with a massive increase in population
No shit sherlock, that was the entire point of the erradication, they were killing and eating the local wildlife population.
, and the excreta that the rats generated had to be fertilizing something, so at least one other species won't do as well, and there will be knock on effects from that.
Rats are not native to the environment on the island, hence a pest. Anything dependent on them can only also be a recent introduction so if it kills off other introduced species all the better. The island is mostly barrow with just ground shrub and I seriously doubt the Rats were providing any benefit that the birds couldn't.