Northern Royal Albatross, LGK (the male, lime/green/black), captured on Royal Cam, the Department of Conservation's 24-hour live stream of an albatross nest during the breeding season

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DoC) has advised it is likely the four Northern Royal Albatross eggs discovered missing from the Taiaroa Head colony on Thursday 10 November may never be found.

Police are involved in the case and are reviewing CCTV footage gathered from the site itself, Port Otago and Blue Penguins Pukekura in the hope of finding a lead in the investigation. 

With almost all avenues explored and no current breakthroughs in the investigation, it is increasingly feared the missing eggs have been poached.

A more detailed article on the investigation has been published in the Otago Daily Times. 

25 November 2022

French and Spanish versions of the ACAP Species Infographic for the Endangered Sooty Albatross Phoebetria fusca in support of last year's World Albatross Day and its theme of Climate Change are now available, along with earlier released English version. English and Portuguese language versions of infographics are available to download here, whilst French and Spanish versions can be found in their respective language menus for the website under, Infographies sur les espèces and Infographía sobres las especies.

The infographic in the three official ACAP languages has been co-published with South Africa's Mouse-Free Marion Project, which aims to eradicate the island’s introduced House Mice Mus musculus.  The mice have taken to attacking and killing the seabirds, including its breeding Sooty Albatrosses – as is illustrated in the infographic.

Versions in the three ACAP official languages of English, French and Spanish are now available for all nine ACAP albatross infographics produced to date.  Available in two poster sizes (approximately A2 and A3) and in a web version, the infographic may be freely downloaded and used non-commercially and with acknowledgement in the support of albatross conservation.

The Sooty Albatross Infographic follows on from the eight previously produced for the Endangered Antipodean Diomedea antipodensis, Near Threatened Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes, Endangered Grey-headed Thalassarche chrysostoma, Near Threatened Laysan P. immutabilis, Near Threatened Shy T. cauta, Critically Endangered Tristan D. dabbenena, Vulnerable Wandering D. exulans and the Critically Endangered Waved Phoebastria irrorata Albatrosses.

All the infographics have been created by Thai illustrator Namasri ‘Namo’ Niumim who has also produced a poster illustrating the albatrosses depicted on the infographics (click here).

Sponsorships for a further six infographics have been obtained, including for three ACAP-listed petrels.  It is intended that some at least of these will be prepared in time for the fourth World Albatross Day and its theme of "Plastic Pollution" on 19 June next year.

John Cooper, ACAP News Correspondent, 24 November 2022

The XIII SCAR Biology Symposium will be held in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa (Christchurch, New Zealand), 31 July – 4 August 2023. It will be the first SCAR meeting in three years to take place face-to-face.

The Symposium will feature a comprehensive schedule of keynotes, plenaries and concurrent sessions with a mid-week break for social activities. Organisers have placed particular emphasis on enhancing the program with the “tikanga (traditions) and mātauranga (knowledge) of New Zealand’s indigenous knowledge (mātauranga Māori people)”. Satellite meetings and workshops are to be held the weekends either side of the Symposium.

Support for early career researchers to attend the Symposium will be available.

The call for abstracts opens 7 December 2022 with a deadline of 21 March 2023. More information on the Symposium, including a full list of important dates is available from the conference website.

23 November 2022

A House Mouse on Marion Island, photograph by Ben Dilley

Luke Gierus (Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide, Australia) and colleagues have published open access in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on developing a genetic biocontrol strategy to control House Mice Mus musculus.  Although the paper suggests from modelling that eradication of mice in an island situation could be achieved by utilizing a ‘gene drive’ that spreads through a population and makes females infertile, the technique has yet to be tested outside the laboratory in field trials.

ACAP Latest News reached out to Anton Wolfaardt, Project Manager of the Mouse-Free Marion Project on the possibility of using such a strategy to eradicate the albatross-killing mice of South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island.

Anton writes in reply: “There are still quite a few hurdles to overcome before this is a tool that could be considered a possible option.  The first is a technical one, currently being investigated by research – does it work and what are the potential consequences?  The second and perhaps more challenging hurdle is a regulatory one – most governments don’t currently have regulatory frameworks that are equipped to deal with such a tool, and there are considerable ethical issues that regulators would need to consider.  There is no guarantee if and when this may be shown to work, and when it may be approved for use, hence - for our current planning to eradicate mice from Marion Island - our focus is on methods that are already proven and are currently available.  We cannot afford to wait for an as-yet unproven methodology with no certain timeframe around when it might become available.”

So, while a new method to eradicate mice would be an addition to counter the impacts of invasive mice on islands, it seems that efforts to eradicate Marion’s mice, and those on other seabird islands, such as the USA’s Midway Atoll next year, will continue to use the “tried and tested” method of aerial dispersion of a rodenticide-laced cereal bait.  This has shown to be successful in eradicating mice on a number of sub-Antarctic islands, including Enderby and Antipodes off New Zealand, Australia’s Macquarie and South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur)* in the South Atlantic.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Invasive rodents are a major cause of environmental damage and biodiversity loss, particularly on islands.  Unlike insects, genetic biocontrol strategies including population-suppressing gene drives with biased inheritance have not been developed in mice.  Here, we demonstrate a gene drive strategy (t_CRISPR) that leverages super-Mendelian transmission of the t haplotype to spread inactivating mutations in a haplosufficient female fertility gene (Prl).  Using spatially explicit individual-based in silico modeling, we show that t_CRISPR can eradicate island populations under a range of realistic field-based parameter values.   We also engineer transgenic t_CRISPR mice that, crucially, exhibit biased transmission of the modified t haplotype and Prl mutations at levels our modeling predicts would be sufficient for eradication.  This is an example of a feasible gene drive system for invasive alien rodent population control.”

Read a New Scientist article on the publication.

Reference:

Gierus, L., Birand, A., Bunting, M.D., Godahewa, G.I., Piltz, S.G., Oh, K.P., Piaggio, A.J., Threadgill, D.W., Godwin, J., Edwards, O., Cassey, P., Ross, J.V., Prowse, T.A.A. & Thomas, P.Q. 2022.  Leveraging a natural murine meiotic drive to suppress invasive populations.  PNAS doi.org/10.1073/pnas.22133081

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.

John Cooper, ACAP News Correspondent, 21 November 2022