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Clearing Rats and Mice from South Georgia

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Clearing Rats and Mice from South Georgia Rodent eradication scaled up: clearing rats and mice from South Georgia A. R. MARTIN and M . G . R ICHARDSON Abstract The Subantarctic island of South Georgia lost rate of success. Pioneered largely in the New Zealand archi- most of its birds to predation by rodents introduced by peo- pelago, where the need was urgent and extreme (Towns & ple over centuries. In a UK charity began to clear Broome, ), but then implemented more widely, rodent brown rats Rattus norvegicus and house mice Mus musculus eradications increased in scale from . km (Maria Island) from the km long, , km island using helicopters to in the early s (Moors, ) through km (Campbell spread bait containing Brodifacoum as the active ingredient. Island) in (McClelland & Tyree, )to km South Georgia’s larger glaciers were barriers to rodent (Macquarie Island) in (Springer, ). In each case, movement, resulting in numerous independent sub-island operations were informed by lessons learned and experience populations. The eradication could therefore be spread gained from earlier eradications. over multiple seasons, giving time to evaluate results before The island of South Georgia, an Overseas Territory of the recommencing, and also reducing the impact of non-target UK, has long been known to host damaging alien species in- mortality across the island as a whole. Eradication success troduced by successive waves of human visitors over more was achieved in the km Phase trial operation. Work than centuries. Formally discovered and named by Captain in (Phase ) and early (Phase ) covered the re- Cook in , the wealth of wildlife on land and offshore, sus- maining km occupied by rodents. By July , tained by the highly biologically productive waters on and be- months after baiting was concluded, there was no sign of yond its shelf, attracted sealers, then whalers, then fishers. surviving rodents, other than one apparently newly intro- Visiting ships often carried stowaway rats and mice, which duced by ship in October . A survey using detection were accidentally introduced to many sites along South dogs and passive devices will search the Phase and Georgia’s long and indented coastline. Brown rats Rattus nor- Phase land for rodents in early . Seven (of ) species vegicus and house mice Mus musculus persisted into the st of breeding birds suffered losses from poisoning, but all po- century. It is likely that black rats Rattus rattus were also intro- pulations appear to have recovered within years. The en- duced but were unable to survive the hostile, cold climate. demic South Georgia pipit Anthus antarcticus was the first The impact of rodents, especially rats, on South Georgia’s bird to breed in newly rat-free areas, but there were also native wildlife was obvious to anyone visiting both the main signs that cavity-nesting seabirds were exploring scree habi- island and any of the vegetated rodent-free offshore islands tat denied them for generations. Enhanced biosecurity mea- in recent decades. The endemic South Georgia pipit Anthus sures on South Georgia are needed urgently to prevent antarcticus and many burrow/cavity-nesting seabirds were rodents being reintroduced. unable to breed successfully in the presence of rats, and nested only on offshore islands. Some prions Pachyptila Keywords Eradication, invasive alien species, mouse, spp. and diving petrels Pelecanoides spp. persisted at high non-target mortality, rat, South Georgia, Subantarctic elevations on the main island, although even there they were not safe from predation. Rats crossed large areas of bar- ren scree, nesting at elevations of up to m (S. Poncet, Introduction Island LandCare, Falkland Islands, pers. comm.). Despite the damage caused by rodents to South Georgia’s nvasive alien species have long been recognized as a native wildlife having been recognized for decades, until the Imajor cause of extinctions on islands, with rodents end of the th century there seemed to be no realistic pro- being among the most destructive animals in this regard spect of controlling their numbers, let alone eradicating (Jones et al., ). Over recent decades efforts to eradicate them entirely. Although the number and size of islands suc- rodents from islands have increased in number, scale and cessfully cleared of rodents globally was increasing, by the largest attempted eradication was in an area of only ha (Cromarty et al., ), , .% of the land area A.R. MARTIN* (Corresponding author) Centre for Remote Environments, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4DY, UK requiring treatment on South Georgia. However, a break- E-mail [email protected] through was made in , when the , ha Campbell M. G. RICHARDSON South Georgia Heritage Trust, Dundee, UK Island was successfully cleared of brown rats (McClelland & *Also at: South Georgia Heritage Trust, Verdant Works, Dundee DD1 5BT, UK Tyree, ). Not only was this eradication larger than any Received October . Revision requested November . of its predecessors, but the island was, like South Georgia, Accepted February . First published online August . remote and in the Subantarctic. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, Downloadeddistribution, from https://www.cambridge.org/core and reproduction in any medium,. IP address: provided 170.106.35.234 the original work, on is 01 properly Oct 2021 cited. at 01:06:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsOryx, 2019, 53(1), 27–35 © 2017. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003060531700028X Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S003060531700028X 28 A. R. Martin and M. G. Richardson A small-scale but important rodent eradication operation The terrain is mountainous, with peaks . , m (high- was carried out on ha Grass Island, in South Georgia’s est , m). At latitude °S, South Georgia is south of Stromness Bay, in (Poncetetal.,). This project de- the Antarctic Convergence and has a Subantarctic climate. monstrated that the second-generation rodenticide Snow is possible on any day of the year, and storms are fre- Brodifacoum could be deployed successfully to destroy R. nor- quent. Over half of the island is covered by permanent ice vegicus in summer, and indicated that an operation across all and snow. Many glaciers flow from the ice-cap to the parts of South Georgia harbouring rodents could be feasible. north and south coasts, although most are receding rapidly The largest rodent eradication operations, including that as a result of climate change (Cook et al., ). Glaciers that on Campbell Island, had hitherto been funded and carried end in the sea form total barriers to rodents. They effectively out by governments or large NGOs. The Government of divide the island into many independent land areas, most South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands identified with their own population of rats or, in two cases amounting the eradication of rats as an objective (McIntosh & Walton, to km , mice. No areas of land were known to host both ) but did not have the capacity in to take on such a rats and mice in recent times. huge challenge (Christie & Brown, ). Around that time Almost all terrain not under permanent ice and snow was the newly formed South Georgia Heritage Trust, a small, in- occupied by rodents at the beginning of the st century, dependent UK charity, decided to raise funds for a rodent amounting to c. , km . Only a narrow ice-free strip of eradication campaign and subsequently assumed responsi- land along the southern end of the south coast was free of bility for managing the operation. rodents (Fig. ), probably because conditions are too inhos- The only methodology offering any chance of success on pitable for them to survive there. Little wildlife occurs in this an island with the land area and topography of South area; even low-lying land is snow-covered until well into Georgia was aerial (helicopter) spreading of bait that con- summer, leaving insufficient time for burrow-nesting birds tained a rodenticide with a proven capacity to eradicate ro- to breed before the onset of winter. Overall, rodents occupied dents. This technique had been successful on Campbell c. % of the land area of the main island of South Georgia, Island and was the standard methodology for islands un- and all of the terrain favoured by native wildlife. suitable for ground baiting methods (Broome et al., ). Although it provided a plausible means of clearing rodents from South Georgia, aerial bait spreading held risks for non- Methods target wildlife and perhaps even for the people living on the island. Firstly, the spreading of a toxin could potentially poi- Operational strategy son native wildlife and, if it got into potable water supplies, people too. Secondly, aircraft flying over bird concentrations The scale of the task on South Georgia, requiring bait to be have the potential to cause substantial damage, including the spread over an area greater by an order of magnitude than loss of eggs or young, and even mass mortality (Rounsevell & that of the largest island tackled to date, was such that it Binns, ; Cooper et al., ; Harris, ; Hughes et al., could not be completed in a single season, as had all previous ). South Georgia has hundreds of colonies of alba- rodent eradications. Glaciers on South Georgia provided the trosses, giant petrels and penguins, the majority of which opportunity for the eradication to be spread over several sea- would have to be over-flown by bait-spreading helicopters sons. If the entire land area between two glaciers could be because they are in areas that contained rats. Operational cleared of rodents in a season, those glaciers would prevent success would therefore be dependent on three factors: the rats or mice reinvading. The ability to spread the work across killing of every target animal, the well-being of people living years also provided the crucial opportunity to test whether on the island, and wildlife mortality being kept sufficiently the methodology was successful before continuing.
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