Saving Island Birds: A Job for the Rat Catcher?

Environmentalists are taking toxic cereal bait and rat traps to the Scilly isles' Round Island. They hope, by eradicating the rats, to protect the island's ground-nesting seabirds. Rats take and eat both eggs and chicks. Round Island is utilised by visiting endangered Manx shearwaters and Storm petrels ((https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/12/round-island-invasive-species-rats-scilly-isles-aoe). It's a sad fact of life that many environmentalists have to kill some species to protect others. Round Island's ground-nesting seabirds, choose locations with low numbers of mammalian predators. The introduced rats will have to be eliminated, if the birds are to thrive. Similar issues apply to many other island situations (e.g. Hawaii, the Galapagos and islands near Antarctica). In such locations, geographical isolation creates unique (endemic) species of birds and other animals. These distinctive faunas are frequently subsequently endangered by deliberate or inadvertent introductions of rats, mice, feral cats, pigs, mongeese etc. The environmentalists, charged with protecting endemic animals, have to become rat, mouse, feral cat, pig or mongoose killers!