Breaking News! Rat Island Finally Rat-Free After 229 Years!

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Alaska's Rat Island rat-free after 229 years
Sun, Jun 14 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Alaska's Rat Island is finally rat-free,
229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto
the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population.

After dropping poison onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets
for a week and a half last autumn, there are no signs of living rats
and some birds have returned, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.

Rats have ruled the island since 1780, when they jumped off a sinking
Japanese ship and terrorized all but the largest birds on the island.
The incident introduced the non-native Norway rat -- also known as the
brown rat -- to Alaska.

The $2.5 million Rat Island eradication project, a joint effort
between the U.S. federal government, the Nature Conservancy and Island
Conservation, is one of the world's most ambitious attempts to remove
destructive alien species from an island.

Now there are signs that several species of birds, including Aleutian
cackling geese, ptarmigan, peregrine falcons and black oystercatchers,
are starting to nest again on the 10-square-mile (26-sq-km) island.

It is too soon to say that Rat Island is definitively rat-free,
however. That can only be established after at least two years of
monitoring, said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife
Service in Anchorage.

"We don't know that there's not a couple of happy rats hiding away
that are going to spring out and repopulate the island," he said.

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