Rodents Eviction

[Rosemary]

Biologists aim to wipe out "Rat Island" - Yahoo! News

By Yereth Rosen Tue Oct 2, 1:37 PM ET

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Two centuries after rats first landed on a remote Aleutian island from a shipwreck, wildlife managers in Alaska are plotting how to evict the non-native rodent from the island that bears their name.

[FONT=&quot]Rat Island, like many other treeless, volcanic islands in the 1,000-mile (1,609-km) long Aleutian chain, is infested with rats that have proved devastating to wild birds that build nests in the earth or in rocky cliffs.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Rodents have reigned at Rat Island at the western end of the Aleutians since the 1780 shipwreck of a Japanese sailing ship, wreaking havoc on millions of seabirds with no natural defenses against land predators.[/FONT]


[FONT=&quot]Why have they waited this long to do something about it?
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[Talysia]

It does seem odd that no-one has done anything about it until now. Hopefully the balance can be restored.

 

[Ursa major]

At the bottom of the BBC page on the Ig-Nobels, there was a link to a story about the cats who live in the Hermitage Museum. Their predecessors (I don't think they were ancestors, given the Siege of Leningrad) were intoduced because they were the "best ratters" in Russia. Time for a little cross-cultural cooperation, methinks. (Or perhaps a lot, given the number of rats.)

 

[Pyan]

Ah, but then how will you control the cats' numbers?

 

[Ursa major]

Someone is bound to come up with a Master Stroke.

* feels the power surging down his arm *

(Or is it a short circuit surging the other way? )

 

[Pyan]

The more I think about this, the odder it gets....surely after over 200 years, the situation will have stabilised....?

 

[flygin]

The situation has stabilized. On Rat Island, at least. They're just using it as a convenient location to experiment.

 

[Overread]

True - a mass poison - whilst effective, has the nast side effect of killing off more than you want it to (remember DDT)
Chances are they will either try out a new form of poison, or some hunting/trapping methods

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

One good variety of DDT-resistant rats coming up!