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Gough Island, located in the center of the South Atlantic, far from any major landmbad, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its pristine environment.
But for 20 years, scientists have been monitoring millions of people.
As the sun sets over nesting bird colonies, a disturbing threat emerges from undergrowth.
Twice as large as normal, mice on the Gough Islands have become giants.
They also developed a taste for blood.
Mice search for seabird chicks and start eating their flesh. These invasive rodents are so pervasive that a new document published this week in IBIS estimates that every year 1.7 million chicks are killed by mice.
"We observed mice attacking chicks. Tristan albatross, where rodents will eat through the body wall near the rump of the bird as long as they are still alive. The death of chicks can take up to four days. "
No natural predator
Located some 2,800
This magnificent isolation is an ideal nesting place for many birds predator-free seabirds.It currently houses some 22 species of seabirds and two species of landbirds that breed on rugged terrain.
Among these are rare species such as the Endangered Atlantic petrel and Tristan albatross, critically endangered.And there are also many endemic species on the island, such as the Gough Finch and the prion
Mice, however, are not native to Gough Island. Introduced at some point in the middle of the nineteenth century by pbading ships, they quickly spread over the entire site when their population exploded.
But they do not have natural predators, which makes the chicks vulnerable.
This means that a single mouse weighing only 30 grams can kill an albatross chick weighing 10 kg.
It has also been found that sometimes mice will move into gangs. "We can see up to eight or nine mice attacking a single albatross chick, but they usually feed alone," says Alex
. "The chicks simply did not develop the behavioral defenses
Looking at the number of chicks successfully bred on Gough Island from a selection of species, and
For an island with about four million breeding pairs of seabirds, predation has been Some years, for example, the prion
If nothing has been done, many species will simply disappear
Rodent Eradication
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is planning a program to eradicate each mouse from Gough Island by 2020. This will involve the use of helicopters for drop poison baits all over the island.
"Helicopters fly a very specific and complex pattern across the island twice over a six-week period, dropping the rodenticide," Alex explains. "The idea is that you make two drops in a very short window and that the problem of the mouse disappears."
Although this may sound deceptively simple, it took years of planning to get to this stage and the logistics of this are huge in such a remote place. But the results are worth it.
After having already been carried out on nearly 700 islands, scientists can be certain that the poison will not have any harmful effects. will be completely free of mice for the first time in generations, providing seabirds a safe place to raise their young.
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