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