![]() Other rat eradications on Pinzon, Rabida and many small islands have proved spectacularly successful. ![]() Now a phalanx of bait stations will likely preclude recolonization. The marine environment will also benefit because coral depends on nitrogen from bird guano.Ī 2007 attempt at rat eradication on these two islands succeeded but rats apparently swam from Baltra Island and repopulated. Virtually inevitable on North Seymour and Mosquera are population explosions of magnificent and great frigate birds, blue-footed boobies, Nazca bobbies, swallow-tailed gulls (the world’s only nocturnal gull), critically endangered lava gulls, and Galápagos racer snakes. “That’s effectively opening a door to a whole new suite of islands that haven’t been feasible for recovery in the past.” One of the six-rotor drones used to spread rodenticide bait over North Seymour and Mosquera Islands. “You can take a drone, pack it up, put it on a plane and go anywhere in the world with it,” declares Island Conservation’s Chad Hanson, who led the operation. ![]() This drone delivery of rodenticide was a first in island recovery and a global game changer. The drones were piloted and maintained by Cameron Baker and Samuel Vye-founders of New Zealand’s Environment and Conservation Technologies LTD. Two were deployed, each carrying 44 pounds of bait specifically designed by Bell Labs of Madison, Wisconsin for the island’s climate and to repulse non-target wildlife. It used drones to apply bait laced with the anticoagulant rodenticide brodifacoum at 25 parts per million. The most recent victory was the January 2019 apparent eradication of black and Norway rats from 456-acre North Seymour Island and nearby 12-acre Mosquera Islet.Ĭoordinating the project was Island Conservation, a non-profit outfit dedicated to preventing extinctions around the world. Human introductions of pigs, goats, burros, black rats, Norway rats, house mice and house cats to the Galápagos Islands left the unique biodiversity of this World Heritage site in shambles.īut increasingly effective methods of eradicating these aliens are producing stunning results that have provided instruction for similar recoveries around the globe, that should inspire all advocates of native ecosystems, and that promise to eventually return the Galápagos Islands to a reasonable facsimile of what Darwin encountered.
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