Last days for Amsterdam Island’s rats and mice? The eradication project gets underway

A trapped Norway Rat on Amsterdam Island, photograph by Thomas Goisque

The eradication of Norway Rats Rattus norvegicus and House Mice Mus musculus has commenced in earnest on France’s sub-Antarctic Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean.  Preparations on the island by the project RECI (Restauration des écosystèmes insulaires de l’océan Indien; Restoration of Insular Ecosystems of the Indian Ocean) started around April this year, with the aerial drop of rodenticide cereal bait due to have commenced before the end of May, according to the Facebook page of Terres australes et antarctiques françaises (TAAF).

Collecting apples in the Cratère Antonelli, photograph by Lucie Pichot

Test loading the bucket, photograph by Lucie Pichot

Initial activities have included setting up photographic traps, installing grids to guide manual bait spreading in and around the Martin-de-Viviès scientific station and at Point Benedict, collecting apples in the Cratère Antonelli to limit a food source for rodents, and a field test of loading the bait spreader.

A House Mouse feeds on a fruit of the dwarf tree Phylica arborea on Amsterdam Island, photograph by Florian Leemann

Amsterdam Island’s Norway Rats have been suspected of being a carrier for the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, responsible for avian cholera which kills chicks of the globally Endangered Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross Thalassarche carteri, on the island, of which two- thirds of the world population breeds on Amsterdam’s Entrecasteaux Cliffs.

Already gone?  Feral cats on Amsterdam Island have been a target of RECI by trapping and shooting, photograph by Mathias Régnier

Read more about the Amsterdam eradication here, here and here.  “Eradicating Island Pests” was ACAP's theme for the inaugural World Albatross Day on 19 June 2020.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 31 May 2024