Australian Island Rids Cats to Protect Birds but Plan Backfires

The Australian island of Macquarie is located about half way between Australia and the Antarctic Continent. It is the only island that is composed totally of oceanic crust and is known for its 3.5 million seabirds and 80,000 elephant seals that arrive each year to breed. In 1995, the Parks and Wildlife Services of Tasmania set out to save the seabirds that were being threatened by a predator that was not native to the land; feral cats. The concept seemed simple enough; rid the island of the cats and save the birds. While the bird population has seen strides in the time since, the ecosystem that protects the birds in now endangered and the plan has totally backfired (source: news,yahoo.com).

The decision to get rid of the felines proved devastating to much of the local vegetation that the birds rely on for cover. The reason for the environmental devastation is another pest that is not native to the island; rabbits. With the cats out of the way the rabbis were able to flourish and have destroyed a great deal of the natural ecosystem that holds the island together. Now researchers are faced with the task of ridding the island of the rabbits (source: news.yahoo.com).

Looking back researchers admit that the rabbits and the cats should have been eradicated at the same time or the rabbits first and then the cats. But as they say, "Hind sight is 20/20." Now officials are faced with a project of ridding the island of all its foreign pests which not only include the rabbits, but mice and rats as well. All of the foreign animals including the now extinct cats probably came from passing ships over the last 100 years. While the struggle to get rid of the invaders has gone on for nearly a decade, new advances in poisons have led to a plan (source: news.yahoo.com).

The plan will cost approximately 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million U.S. dollars) and will aim at eliminating all three of the species that are not native to the island of Macquarie. The plan which is scheduled to start in 2010 will include using helicopters with GPS to strategically drop poisonous baits specifically targeting the rats, mice and rabbits. Later teams will go to the island to shoot, trap and fumigate any pests that remain (source: news.yahoo.com).

Researchers say that all long term implications have been considered with the plan and that the long term effect will be positive for the island's ecosystem (source: news.yahoo.com). So while the mistake was made in the past to just rid the cats to save the birds, the mistake has been recognized, analyzed and is ready to be remedied.