Efforts To Save Seabird Populations On Rathlin Island Combine Science And Mountaineering - And Seem To Be Working

The dramatic sea cliffs, crags and stacks of Rathlin Island, county Antrim, rise more than 200 metres above the Atlantic Ocean and host one of the UK’s largest seabird colonies, including hundreds of endangered puffins, attracting up to 20,000 birders and tourists a year. On a spectacularly sunny day in September, the cliff faces are devoid of birds, with the puffins already having made their annual migration to spend the winter months at sea. Instead, Rathlin’s cliffs are dotted with roped-up figures in harnesses and bulging rucksacks, directed from above by a Scottish mountaineer, via a walkie-talkie.

They are part of a crack team of 40 scientists, researchers, conservationists and volunteers who this week will put the first poisoned food into the bait stations designed to kill the island’s rats. It is the final phase in a £4.5m project to eradicate the key predators believed to be affecting the island’s puffin colony. Ferrets were tackled in the first phase and it has been a year since the last confirmed sighting. Puffin numbers declined here by 74% between 1991 and 2021, according to an EU study. “It is a monster task,” says Stuart Johnston, director of operations at Climbwired International Ltd, which trains scientists and researchers to access remote areas by rope. “Some of the highest cliffs in the UK are found on this island. We can’t abseil down from these clifftops, as they are basalt and laterite, and very crumbly. We have to go underneath, that’s where the mountaineering comes in.”

Johnston and his crew have been preparing the ground for this event over the past year as part of the Life Raft project, an EU and National Lottery Heritage Fund partnership that includes the RSPB Northern Ireland and the local community association. He points out a horizontal stainless steel safety wire, running across the middle of the 150-metre Knockans cliffs, on to which the climbers are clipped to stop them falling into the Atlantic when placing the traps. The traps, or “bait stations” designed for rats, are plastic tubes, fitted with wires to keep out crows, rabbits and other non-target species.

For the next seven months, come rain, snow or shine, the climbers will scale each cliff, crag and stack, loading the traps with poison, while others will cover the fields, forests, gardens and other terrain. “The ledges are full of bird shite and are just minging,” says Johnston. “The stacks are riddled with rats.” Rats probably arrived on boats centuries ago, and ferrets were released deliberately to control rabbits. They both feed on seabirds and their young, and until last year, when almost 100 ferrets were caught and killed in the project’s first phase, they were everywhere. Eradicating rats and other invasive animals from islands is one of the most effective tools for protecting wildlife, and has an 88% success rate, leading to dramatic increases in biodiversity, according to a study in 2022 that analysed data stored on the Database of Island Invasive Species Eradications. By early October, 6,700 traps, one every 50 metres squared – the size of a rat’s territory – had been laid in a grid pattern across the 3,400-acre (1,400-hectare) island. Now they will be loaded with poison.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/20/its-a-monster-task-can-culling-ferrets-and-rats-save-one-of-the-uks-largest-seabird-colonies