Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue
William Stolzenburg
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 1608193322
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Rat Island, midway between Alaska and Siberia, was once a sanctuary for seabirds, before shipwrecked rats came ashore and savaged them. It's a familiar scenario repeating across the oceans of the world: innocent island species under attack by foreign predators, and, lately, defended by their would-be rescuers employing radical measures.
Peopled with unforgettable characters and propelled by perilous adventure, Rat Island reveals a little-known and hotly debated practice of killing for conservation.
Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life
Environmental Physiology of Plants (3rd Edition)
Ecology: Global Insights and Investigations
The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History
Edible Forest Gardens - Volume 2: Ecological Design and Practice For Temperate Climate Permaculture
Howald’s crew found the ground littered with rat kibble, almost identical in appearance to the poison bait awaiting deployment. Lab tests came back confirming his suspicions. The pellets had been infused with vitamin K, a standard remedy for brodifacoum poisoning. “My god,” thought Howald, “these guys are attempting to spread the antidote.” Puddicombe soon had allies. Five days later the Park Service received notice from the Fund for Animals, a national animal rights organization based in New.
That these kills were somehow within the Aleutians’ bell curve of normality. Howald, who knew brodifacoum better than anybody else on the team, resisted the easiest and most damning conclusion: “I don’t know that they’re nontarget kills yet. We merely noticed a higher number of dead birds on the beaches. We’ve also been finding pelagic seabirds, where there’s zero to no chance of rodenticide in them. I don’t know what’s going on yet. Certainly the number of eagles presents the biggest concern.”.
Who shot one feral cat as it was chasing a rare shorebird was arrested and faced up to two years in jail and a sixty-thousand-dollar fine before the charges were overturned. There are now organizations throughout the country actually promoting and feeding feral cat colonies. They are operating very successfully in Hawaii, the U.S. capital of extinction and endangerment, where some of the rarest birds on the planet are still being taken by the subsidized cats. New Zealanders, on the other hand,.
That fortress again. “It’s a natural mainland island,” he said. Sinbad is surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs and on the fourth by the sea. The gully is a geological stoat fence. “Stoats are capable of coming down out of the top four to five thousand feet,” said Merton, “but it wouldn’t happen very often.” His idea—and he is not alone in the suggestion—is to clear the valley of predators, bring the kakapo home, and guard the few entrances against reinvasion. Or maybe not. “It is not high.
To avoid their type. The brown rats swept inland, pushing the smaller kiore aside, making meat of forest birds so conveniently nesting on the ground. They spread through the mountains and forests. By the 1870s the plague of rats had become a common entry in the journals of New Zealand’s colonial naturalists. “This cosmopolitan pest swarms through every part of the country, and nothing escapes its voracity,” wrote the ornithologist Walter Buller. “It is very abundant in all our woods, and the.