The New Zealand Journal of Ecology has published a special issue (Vol 40, No. 2; 2016) containing eight open-access papers that discuss the roles of rats on seabird islands, including a number that support breeding populations of procellariiforms.

Black Petrels: endemic to New Zealand

The authors and titles of these papers follow.  Click on the downloads to obtain the texts.

Elizabeth Bell, Brian Bell & Don Merton. The legacy of Big South Cape: rat irruption to rat eradication.  Download pdf (3.06 MB).

Grant Harper & Malcolm Rutherford.  Home range and population density of black rats (Rattus rattus) on a seabird island: a case for a marine subsidised effect?  Download pdf (625.94 KB).

Judith Robins, Steven Miller, James Russell, Grant Harper & Rachel Fewster. David Towns, Stephanie Borrelle, Joshua Thoresen, Rachel Buxton & Annette Evans.  Where did the rats of Big South Cape Island come from?  Download pdf (1.53 MB).

Imogen Bassett, Jeff Cook, Finlay Buchanan & James Russell.  Treasure Islands: biosecurity in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.  Download pdf (2.3 MB).

Alysha Bagasra, Helen Nathan, Mark Mitchell & James Russell.  Tracking invasive rat movements with a systemic biomarker.  Download pdf (481.11 KB).

Keith Springer.  Methodology and challenges of a complex multi-species eradication in the sub-Antarctic and immediate effects of invasive species removal. Download pdf (5.17 MB).

Rowley Taylor.  Early ecological research on rodents in New Zealand, 1946–1976: personal recollections.  Download pdf (2.42 MB).

The papers were first presented at the 50th Anniversary of Rodent Eradications in New Zealand Symposium, held at the University of Auckland in September 2014.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 15 January 2015

A Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi nest at Taiaroa Head, New Zealand has been fitted with a webcam due to go live once the egg hatches – expected this week.  It is then intended it will broadcast the chick-rearing period until the chick fledges (click here).

A Northern Royal Albatross chick gets fed at Taiaroa Head

The webcam joins one that will soon be filming a Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis nest and its chick on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as it has for several years past (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 14 January 2015

Water is planned to be trucked to Taiaroa Head on New Zealand’s Otago Peninsula to help its Endangered Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi chicks survive the high temperatures expected from the current El Niño weather conditions.

The Otago Peninsula Trust is raising funds to truck in additional water for a recently-installed irrigation system used to spray nests to cool the birds down so they do not overheat.

Northern Royal Albatross and chick at Taiaroa Head, photograph by Lyndon Perriman

Staff and volunteers at the Royal Albatross Centre anticipate the first chick of the season to hatch out this week.  Last year there were 26 chicks — the second best season —at Taiaroa Head, this year 29 fertile eggs are being incubated.

Read more here.

For an earlier ACAP Latest News item on hot albatrosses click here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 13 January 2015

Filming for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens took place over two weeks during the seabird breeding season on the uninhabited Irish island of Skellig Michael.  The island lies 12 km off the coast of County Kelly in south-west Ireland and is a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site (since 1996) that was once home to a 6th Century Christian monastery made up of stone “beehive huts” for hermit monks.  Skellig Michael supports breeding colonies of some 10 000 pairs of European Storm Petrel Hydrobates pelagicus (10% of the national population) and when last surveyed 738 pairs of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus.

Skellig Michael

Manx Shearwater fledgling, photograph by Jaclyn Pearson

Irish Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys granted permission for up to 180 Star Wars cast and crew members to travel to the island to shoot the new film. Storm petrel and shearwater chicks would then still have been in their burrows.  Although there seems no definite reports of harm being caused to the island’s seabirds the filming has raised a level of controversy (click here).

Filming for an earlier Star Wars episode also took place on Skellig Michael and plans are now afoot for the dynasty to return to the island for Episode VIII (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 January 2016