Remote island free of bird-killing invasive rats

A remote wildlife-rich island has been officially declared free of rats and mice after a £10 million eradication scheme to protect native birds.

The UK overseas territory of South Georgia is free of invasive rodents – which have been arriving as stowaways since Captain Cook discovered the southern Atlantic Ocean island in 1775 – for the first time in more than 200 years.

Birds nesting on the ground or in burrows, whose eggs and chicks were preyed on, are already benefiting from the world’s largest island rodent eradication scheme, according to the South Georgia Heritage Trust.

The song of the South Georgia pipit is back and drowning out the grunts of elephant seals, and flocks of South Georgia pintail are being reported, good news for two species found nowhere else on Earth.

The announcement by the Scottish-based charity that the island is rat-free comes at the end of a habitat restoration project the team began planning in 2008.

0 South Georgia Heritage Trust staff at work on the rodent eradication plan that rid South Georgia of rats, left, which had plagued the island for more than 200 years, allowing groundnesting birds light the black browed albatross, right, to thrive in...