Archived News

Last year Australia's sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island was treated with poison bait to eradicate its Black Rats Rattus rattus, House Mice Mus musculus and European Rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus - all introduced aliens.  Since then a team of hunters with specially trained dogs have been quartering the island to kill the few remaining rabbits which escaped the poison.

Macquarie's Black-browed Albatrosses are expected to benefit from the removal of the island's alien mammals
Photograph by Aleks Terauds

Last month's news from the Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project is very promising as shown by the following extract from MIPEP's latest blog by Dana Boyte:

"The rabbit story so far: 13 dead rabbits since start of hunting phase.  No rabbits have been sighted or caught since November and no fresh rabbit sign or grazing has been found since November either.  So things are looking very promising, but there isn't an option to take it easy in the rabbit searching because there are still a few areas where we had found fresh rabbit sign but haven't been able to catch up with the culprit thus far.  So it is uncertain whether these last few rabbits are excellent at hiding from our watchful eyes and the dog's noses or if they have perhaps died on their own accord or been picked off by Skua.  I guess only time will tell.

In other good news there has also been no sign of rats or mice present on the island since the baiting and the island and wildlife is already positively responding to the lack of rodents and rabbits.

The Antarctic terns are now nesting not just on offshore rock stacks but in higher numbers on the main island due to the lack of predation from rats.  The vegetation around the island is rapidly growing; the tussocks are growing very quickly making walking through them difficult and slow going as in some places it's head height.  Almost everywhere you walk you notice small cabbage plants starting to grow, where there were none at all when the rabbits were around to keep them down.  And in areas where there was heavy rabbit grazing and damage and it was brown and barren the tussocks and other plants are growing back.

Click here for the full account and click here to access all 10 issues of the project's newsletter, the Macquarie Dispatch.

A new team of hunters takes over the dogs this month for a further year of searching for rabbits.

For previous news on this web site about MIPEP click here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 2 May 2012