https://hakaimagazine.com/news/tromelin-islands-impressive-comeback/
"The last rat on Tromelin Island—a small teardrop of scrubby sand in the
western Indian Ocean near Madagascar—was killed in 2005.
Rats had lived on the island, an overseas territory of France, for hundreds of
rat generations. The rodents likely arrived in the late 1700s, when a French
ship—carrying Malagasy people kidnapped for the slave trade—wrecked there, says
Matthieu Le Corre, an ecologist at the University of Reunion Island, a French
overseas region off the coast of Madagascar. Tromelin Island was probably home
to at least eight different seabird species before the rodents arrived,
including hundreds of thousands of frigatebirds, terns, and boobies. But, like
on hundreds of other islands around the world, the rats ate their way through
those birds’ eggs, eventually decimating the populations. By 2005, when French
authorities finally began eradicating the rodents, only two bird species were
left: a few hundred pairs of masked and red-footed boobies.
Today, two decades after authorities banished the rats, Tromelin Island is once
again a thriving seabird paradise, home to thousands of breeding pairs
belonging to seven different species. Even more encouraging, the island is one
of a growing number of cases where seabirds have returned on their own once
invasive predators were successfully eliminated.
“In terms of conservation, it’s a wonderful success,” says Le Corre, one of the
authors of a recent study documenting the recovery."
Via
Fix the News:
<
https://fixthenews.com/good-news-ebola-vaccines-crime-brazil-overfishing-us/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
