The Mouse-Free Marion Project secures a US$10 million pledge from a Swiss foundation

At risk to the onslaughts of the introduced mice: an adult male Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans (Vulnerable) on Marion Island, photograph by Alexis Osborne

The Saving Marion Island’s Seabirds: The Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project has announced that it has secured a pledge of US$10 million from a Swiss-based international foundation towards ridding the island of its albatross-killing House Mice.  This commitment represents the most significant contribution received to date and marks a major milestone in the journey towards restoring Marion Island to its former ecological condition.

This Grey-headed Albatross Thalassarche chrysostoma chick has been scalped by House Mice at night on Marion Island; it was not expected to survive, photograph by Kim Stevens

With this pledge, the MFM Project has now secured approximately 60% of its overall funding target, bringing it significantly closer to delivering one of the most ambitious island eradication operations undertaken in the sub-Antarctic, and to safeguarding Marion Island’s globally important seabird populations for generations to come.

The MFM Project writes “Beyond its financial significance, the pledge carries considerable symbolic weight.  It signals clear recognition by a major international philanthropic foundation that the MFM Project is robustly designed, responsibly led, well governed, and positioned to deliver meaningful and lasting conservation impacts.  Such endorsement provides powerful validation of the years of careful planning, partnership-building and due diligence that underpin the initiative.  The MFM Project presents a rare conservation opportunity: the ability to address a severe biodiversity threat through a single, decisive, once-off intervention.”

By eradicating invasive House Mice from the island, the project aims to secure extraordinary and enduring conservation gains, restoring ecosystem functions and protecting internationally significant seabird colonies, preventing the local extinction of 19 of the 29 bird species breeding on the island.

The MFM Project concludes “Few conservation initiatives offer the prospect of achieving outcomes that are both profound and permanent at this scale”.

Endangered Grey-headed Albatrosses, seen here during a snowfall on Marion, are also at risk to the island’s mice, photograph by Kim Stevens

The latest pledge follows on from one of US$ one million made late last year by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, and more recently R1 million from the Lewis Foundation.

The Mouse-Free Marion Project is a registered non-profit company in South Africa, established to eradicate the invasive albatross-killing mice on Marion Island in the Southern Ocean.  The project was initiated by BirdLife South Africa and the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.  Upon successful completion, the project will restore the critical breeding habitat of over two million seabirds, many globally threatened, and improve the island’s resilience to a warming climate.  For more information or to support the project please visit mousefreemarion.org.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 26 February 2026