The task force will kill every single one of the rodents on British-controlled Henderson Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to save an endangered seabird from extinction. The rats are eating most of the rare petrel chicks and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds operation will drop poison bait from two helicopters guided by sat-nav.
U.N. heritage body UNESCO warned last year the uninhabited island’s World Heritage Site status — alongside such locations as the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands — was in danger of being removed unless work was done to save the birds. RSPB conservation scientist Richard Cuthbert, who will be on the island during the operation, said: “Without a full-scale eradication, the wildlife on this island faces a very bleak future, with the Henderson petrel sliding towards extinction.”
The helicopters are being carried on the ship MV Aquila on a 17,000-mile round trip from Seattle.
And the shared expedition will also eradicate rodents from U.S.-administered Palmyra Atoll and the Phoenix Islands Protected Area owned by Kiribati.
The RSPB has planned the project for a decade and raised more than $2 million for its three-day blitz in August, which will be repeated a week later to ensure no rats survive.
Introduced by Polynesian settlers who once lived on the 14.4-square-mile atoll, rats have decimated four species of the bird, including the Henderson petrel at its only known breeding site.
Research shows 95 percent of petrel chicks, 25,000 a year, are eaten alive and numbers have dropped from millions of pairs 800 years ago to 40,000 now.
The island’s beaches also provide nesting for endangered turtles which will benefit from the rat eradication.
