[imagesource:mousefreemarion.org]

South Africa has started preparations for the largest mouse-eradication project ever done, on a desolate island halfway between South Africa and Antarctica – Marion Island.

The epic mouse hunt aims to prevent rodents from eating the remaining endangered seabirds found on the island.

The country’s environment department together with Birdlife South Africa, a private organisation, are raising about R450 million to kill the mice on Marion Island next year, the South African National Biodiversity Institute said.

“Mice feed on both adult and hatchling endangered seabirds” and harm the ecology with their burros, according to the institute’s annual invasive species report released on Friday.

House mice, which were most likely introduced to the windswept island by sealers in the early nineteenth century, have increased in population over the last 30 years as the environment has become warmer and dryer, according to the department and Birdlife on the ‘Mouse-Free Marion Project’ website.

After reducing their invertebrate diet, the mice began eating more birds.

Conservationists believe that unless action is taken, 19 of the 28 species of breeding seabirds on the island are at risk of being forced into local extinction by the mice over the next 30 years, the department and Birdlife said.

The eradication plan will likely see helicopters being used to drop rodenticide on the 30,000-hectare island, which is a South African territory.

Marion Island has been declared Special Nature Reserves under the South African Environmental Protected Areas Act, and activities on the islands are therefore restricted to research and conservation management. The only human inhabitants of the islands are the staff of a meteorological and biological research station run by the South African National Antarctic Programme on Marion Island.

[source:mybroadband]