Covid-19 stalls RSPB rescue of endangered Tristan Albatross chicks from giant mice

By Dilip -
Among the places not to be stranded when the world goes into lockdown is surely one of the planet’s most remote islands, renowned for its freakishly giant house mice that have evolved into merciless killers. The Foreign Office has revealed details of one of the trickiest rescues it has had to mount because of the coronavirus pandemic, one involving a 12-day sail across the Atlantic and a 4,000 mile flight in an RAF A400 transport aircraft.

A team of 12 conservationists from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds arrived on Gough Island in the south Atlantic in February to begin work on an important, if gruesome, environmental project. Gough Island, which has one of the most important seabird colonies in the world, is the stage for what has been described as “one of nature’s greatest horror shows”. Mice from the boats of seal hunters managed to get on to the island 150 years ago and have somehow evolved to two and even three times the size of an ordinary British house mouse. Every year the mutant mice feast from the nests on live seabird chicks, killing about 2 million of them.

It is a catastrophe that is pushing one of the world’s most threatened species, the Tristan albatross, towards extinction. The RSPB said there was also evidence the mutant mice had begun targeting live adult birds....
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/covid-19-stalls-rspb-rescue-of-albatross-chicks-from-giant-mice-gough-island


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