Wild mammals sacrificed to save Falkland island’s birds

A REMOTE island in the Falklands plans to eradicate rats, mice, rabbits and wild cats in an effort to protect ground nesting birds, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park has announced.

Funding from Westminster will go towards testing a pioneering plan to wipe out the four mammals from New Island, at the very western part of the Falkland Islands.

The £266,000 project will test nontoxic bait over two years to see whether the island’s unique population of ground-nesting birds can be saved from predation by the invasive mammals, introduced over centuries by sailors arriving on the remote archipelago.

The Falklands have no native mammals left and its ground-nesting birds, including slender-billed prions and black-billed albatrosses, are predated and eaten by mice, rats and cats, while the burrowing mammals also damage the island’s peatlands.

New Island is the last place in the Falklands that still has black rats, meaning wiping them out on the island would finally leave the archipelago free of the species, also known as ship rats, spread around the world by vessels over the centuries.

The Falklands have more than 2,000 square miles of peatland but it has been damaged by fires, grazing and wind erosion.

A similar project has been tried on places including Australia’s Lord Howe Island, where a $17 million (£13.6 million) eradication programme to wipe out 300,000 rats proved controversial but has led to an “ecological renaissance”, according to the local government.

Esther Bertram, chief executive of Falklands Conservation, said: “We have this unique wildlife because we have a unique environment, but that environment is also really on the edge, where it is really stressed.

“We’re seeing a lot more increasing windiness – it’s already really windy – we’re seeing a lot of drying.

“Anything that’s trying to nest on the ground is being limited by these predators. You want to rebuild that population, but until you’ve got rid of the predators, it’s not so worth it.”

The project is one of 20 to receive part of £6.4 million in funding to conserve wildlife in UK overseas territories, part of the latest round of the Government’s Darwin Plus initiative, which has been running for a decade.