An albatross versus a mouse might not sound like a fair fight, but on a remote South African island it’s the mice who are winning. The Mouse-Free Marion project has an ambitious plan to turn the tide The South African island's bird population is under threat from an invasive species of mice. Conservationists are hatching a plan to kill up to one million mice on the remote South Africa island of Marion, over fears that the invasive rodents could wipe out the seabirds that live there.
Mice first hitched a ride to Marion on seal-hunting boats about 200 years ago, but in recent decades their population has ballooned up to a million rodents at high season. Wolfaardt said that spike is driven by climate change; warmer and drier conditions extended the mice's breeding window. An injured grey-headed albatross on Marion Island. An invasive species of mice on the island are attacking large seabirds, which have not evolved defences against the new predator. The Marion project will involve a fleet of helicopters dropping poison along precise, overlapping routes across the island. This approach has worked in eradication programs on smaller islands, but Wolfaardt said "the size and the topographic complexity" of Marion presents unique challenges.
The project is a partnership between BirdLife South Africa, a conservation non-profit, and the South African government. The estimated cost is $26 million US, provided through a mix of government support and a fundraising campaign.Wolfaardt said the project's risk assessment suggests some individual birds or animals may inadvertently ingest the poison, perhaps through eating the mice carcasses.
In 2009, Grosholz led a study to see if it was feasible to eradicate another invasive species, European green crabs, from an isolated lagoon in California.The crabs have plagued North American waters for decades, feasting on clams and mussels and costing the commercial shellfish industry millions of dollars every year. U.S. organizations have experimented with harvesting the crabs for fertilizer,.
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