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Warning Sign - Warning Poison. Rat Eradication In Progress

Available Online

Rat eradication warning sign

Restoration of Nu'utele and Nu'ulua Islands (Aleipata group), Samoa, through the management of introduced rats and ants

Available Online

Tye, A. & Butler, D. J.

Archipelago-wide island restoration in the Galapagos Islands: Reducing costs of invaisve mammal eradication programs and reinvasion risk

Available Online

Campbell, Karl J.

Carrion, Victor

Cruz, Felipe

Donian, C. Josh

Lavoie, Christian

Invasive alien mammals are the major driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation on islands. Over the past three decades, invasive mammal eradication from islands has become one of society's most powerful tools for preventing extinction of insular endemics and restoring insular ecosystems. As practitioners tackle larger islands for restoration, three factors will heavily influence success and outcomes: the degree of local support, the ability to mitigate for non-target impacts, and the ability to eradicate non-native species more cost-effectively. Investments in removing invasive species, however, must be weighed against the risk of reintroduction. One way to reduce reintroduction risks is to eradicate the target invasive species from an entire archipelago, and thus eliminate readily available sources. We illustrate the costs and benefits of this approach with the efforts to remove invasive goats from the Galápagos Islands. Project Isabela, the world's largest island restoration effort to date, removed > 140,000 goats from > 500,000 ha for a cost of US$10.5 million. Leveraging the capacity built during Project Isabela, and given that goat reintroductions have been common over the past decade, we implemented an archipelago-wide goat eradication strategy. Feral goats remain on three islands in the archipelago, and removal efforts are underway. Efforts on the Galápagos Islands demonstrate that for some species, island size is no longer the limiting factor with respect to eradication. Rather, bureaucratic processes, financing, political will, and stakeholder approval appear to be the new challenges. Eradication efforts have delivered a suite of biodiversity benefits that are in the process of revealing themselves. The costs of rectifying intentional reintroductions are high in terms of financial and human resources. Reducing the archipelago-wide goat density to low levels is a technical approach to reducing reintroduction risk in the short-term, and is being complemented with a longer-term social approach focused on education and governance.

Eradicating Pacific rats (Rattus exulans) from Nu'utele and Nu'ulua Islands, Samoa - some of the challenges of operating in the tropcial Pacific

Available Online

Butler, D.J.

Tipamaa, F.T.

Tye, A.

Wylie, M.

The restoration of the small offshore islands of Nuutele (108ha) and Nuulua (25ha) has long been identified as a priority for biodiversity conservation in Samoa. The first step towards restoration was the aerial spreading of brodifacoum to eradicate Pacific rats (Rattus exulans) in August 2009. Procedures for the eradication followed those used in New Zealand and involved technical experts from that country. Particular challenges included a tight operational time-frame (two months), technical problems magnified by the remote location, variable reliability of weather forecasting,working with the local community, and mitigating rodenticide exposure risks for the friendly ground-dove (Gallicolumba stairi) (IUCN: vulnerable). Solutions to these challenges are discussed as guidance for similar projects in remote island locations. Follow-up monitoring between August 2009 and March 2010 indicated that the eradication had been successful, but Pacific rats were detected on Nuutele in May 2011. Nuulua has yet to be rechecked in 2011. DNA analyses are being organised to determine if these rats are survivors or re-invaders.

Island Invasives: Eradication and Management. Proceedings of the Conference on Island Invasives.

Available Online

Cloud, M. N. (ed.)

Towns, D. R. (ed.)

Veitch, C. R. (ed.)

The papers and abstracts published in this book are the outcome of the conference on Island Invasives: Eradication and Management held at Tamaki Campus, University of Auckland, New Zealand from 5 to 12 February 2010, hosted by the Centre for Biodiversity and Biosecurity (University of Auckland and Landcare Research), in collaboration with the IUCN/SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group. This conference had "islands" and "eradication of invasive species" as the focus, with emphasis on the work done and results or learning achieved. The conference endeavoured to cover the full breadth of this work by breaking the subject down to: Gaining political, community, financial, and physical support; Eradication techniques tested and used; The immediate results of eradication operations; The longer-term outcomes as seen in the biota of the island and among communities involved; Biosecurity measure for such islands from planning to implementation.

Restoration of Nu'utele and Nu'ulua Islands (Aleipata Group), Samoa through the management of introduced rats and ants - CEPF final project completion report

Biodiversity Conservation, BRB

Available Online

Tye, Alan

From small Maria to massive Campbell: forty years of rat eradications from New Zealand islands

Available Online

Broome, Keith G

Towns, David R

Over the last four decades the eradication of rats from islands around New Zealand has moved from accidental eradication following the exploratory use of baits for rat control to carefully planned complex eradications of rats and cats (Feliscatus) on large islands.

Prognosis for ecosystem recovery following rodent eradication and seabird restoration in an island archipelago.

Available Online

Holly P. JonES

Invasive species are widespread and can have devastating effects on biota, especially insular biota. Invasive species eradications are increasingly employed to promote island recovery to preinvasion states. However, it remains unclear if additional restoration actions may be required on islands that were once heavily reliant on seabird guano for ecosystem functions. Active seabird augmentation has been suggested as necessary to exact ecosystem recovery on contemporary timescales in some cases. I use two experiments on offshore islands in Cook Strait, New Zealand, to test the hypothesis that seabird restoration will restore island ecosystem functioning following invasive rodent removal. The first is a small-scale single-island fertilization experiment that simulates seabird recovery.

Seabird islands take mere decades to recover following rat eradication

Available Online

Jones, Holly P.

Islands house a majority of the worlds biodiversity and are thus critical for biodiversity conservation. Seabird nesting colonies provide nutrients that are integral to maintain island biodiversity and ecosystem function. Invasive rats destroy seabird colonies and thus the island ecosystems that depend on seabird-derived nutrients. After rat eradication, it is unclear how long ecosystem recovery may take, although some speculate on the order of centuries. I looked at ecosystem recovery along a chronosequence of islands that had 1222 years to recover following rat eradication. I show that soil, plant, and spider marine-derived nitrogen levels and C:N ratios take mere decades to recover even after centuries-long rat invasion. Moreover, active seabird restoration could speed recovery even further, giving much hope to quickly conserve many endemic species on islands worldwide.

Improving the breeding success of a colonial seabird: a cost-benefit comparison of the eradication and control of its rat predator

Available Online

Bretagnolle, Vincent.

Culioli, Jean-Michel.

Lorvelec, Olivier.

Pascal, Michel Pascal.

Breeding success of 5 Corys shearwater Calonectris diomedea sub-colonies of Lavezzu Island (Lavezzi Archipelago, Corsica) was checked annually for 25 consecutive years from 1979 to 2004. Between 1989 and 1994, 4 ship rat Rattus rattus controls were performed in several subcolonies. In November 2000, rats were eradicated from Lavezzu Island and its 16 peripheral islets (85 ha) using traps then toxic baits. We compare cost (number of person-hours required in the field) and benefit (Corys shearwater breeding success) of control and eradication. The average breeding success doubled when rats were controlled or eradicated (0.82) compared to the situation without rat management (0.45). Moreover, the average breeding success after eradication (0.86) was significantly (11%) higher than after rat controls (0.75). Furthermore, the great variation in breeding success recorded among sub-colonies both with and without rat control declined dramatically after eradication, suggesting that rats had a major impact on breeding success. The estimated effort needed to perform eradication and checking of the permanent bait-station system during the year following eradication was 1360 person-hours. In contrast, rat control was estimated to require 240 or 1440 person-hours per year when implemented by trained and untrained staff, respectively. Within 6 yr, eradication cost is lower than control cost performed by untrained staff and confers several ecological advantages on more ecosystem components than Corys shearwater alone. Improved eradication tools such as hand or aerial broadcasting of toxic baits instead of the fairly labour-intensive eradication strategy we used would dramatically increase the economic advantage of eradication vs. control. Therefore, when feasible, we recommend eradication rather than control of non-native rat populations. Nevertheless, control remains a useful management tool when eradication is not practicable.

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