“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley”' From To a Mouse by Robert Burns, 1785

“Monument to a Mouse” at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, bronze statue by Kenny Hunter, 2010

The best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry, wrote poet Robbie Burns in his Scottish dialect near 230 years ago. The “Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie” his plough turned up was likely a Wood or Field Mouse Apodemus sylvaticus rather than the more ubiquitous House Mouse Mus musculus. However, his brief description of a cowering and timid animal running away in panic could well fit the public perception of both species.

In some situations, however, House Mice seem anything but “tim'rous”. Introduced House Mice were first recorded attacking and killing albatross chicks far larger than themselves on the United Kingdom’s Gough Island in the South Atlantic in 2001 (click here). Since then, similar attacks have been observed on South Africa’s Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean and across the equator on Hawaii’s Midway Atoll in the North Pacific. And not just chicks, evidence of mice preying upon adult albatrosses comes from all three islands. On Gough and Marion the smaller burrowing petrels have not been spared, leading to zero breeding success for at least one species on Gough in some seasons (click here).

Burns felt empathy for his mouse, but on seabird islands there is no sympathy for introduced rodents of any species. Following many years of the successful eradication of rats on Southern Ocean islands by the aerial dispersion of poison-laced cereal bait, attention in the last decade has turned to targeting the mice directly. Initially, mice were not thought to be a critical alien mammal to eliminate. Nevertheless, although not the primary target, House Mice are now gone from New Zealand’s Enderby Island and Australia’s Macquarie Island. Less success for France’s St Paul Island however, the Black Rats Rattus rattus and European Rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus are no more following a bait drop and a follow up, but the mice remain (click here).

A House Mouse feeds on the exposed scalp of a Vulnerable Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans chick on Marion Island at night - the chick will not survive, photograph by Stefan Schoombie

In the last decade, more directed efforts against House Mice on southern islands have been made, with so far mixed success. Thankfully, they have been successfully eradicated (along with rats) on South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur)* by the South Georgia Habitat Restoration Project and on New Zealand’s Antipodes Island by the Million Dollar Mouse Project. Sadly, the Gough eradication attempt in 2021 failed, as reported by the Gough Island Restoration Programme, and mice are still present, with attacks continuing on the island’s seabirds, although they received a temporary respite with markedly improved breeding success for at least one season after the eradication attempt (click here). Purported reasons for failure have yet to be made public, and it seems likely it will be some years yet before a second eradication attempt is made.

The Midway Seabird Protection Project’s bait drop is apparently happening right (or about) now, but it seems the project is keeping its cards close to its chest, as there has been no public information released for quite some time (but see here). Keeping such contentious activities as broadcasting poison bait out of the public eye may be a good strategy for some countries, given the for and against passions that can arise. The USA, for example, has yet to undertake an operation to rid the Farallon Islands of its House Mice after many years, despite what must be by now mountains of paperwork and many meetings (click here).

It is not that easy for this admittedly monolingual correspondent to find out exactly what is happening to rid the French austral islands of their remaining introduced mammals. However, .it is intended that Amsterdam will be “deratted” (including of its House Mice) in winter 2024, according to the projet RECI (Restauration des écosystèmes insulaires de l’océan Indien). It seems there are no immediate plans to remove introduced mammals from the other French islands in the Southern Ocean, the Crozets and Kerguelen, or St Paul’s mice.

The route being taken by the Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project is an open one.  An active news section with weekly posts on its website, and its Facebook and Instagram accounts in near-daily use, allow interested readers to keep up to date with progress toward an intended eradication attempt in 2025. This level of transparency can result in criticism being aired via social media. The project attempts to address such concerns by reply via its website, as shown by a recent post explaining why it does not intend to control mouse numbers to save a few individual birds prior to the bait drop (click here). In addition, several members of the MFM Project Team are particularly active in giving talks and lectures on the planned eradication (click here for an example); another being today’s online lecture by the Project Leader, as illustrated below.

In this presentation, the Mouse-Free Marion Project Manager, Dr Anton Wolfaardt, provides an overview of the project, focusing on the planning and management involved in such an endeavour

Over in the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas*, the New Island Restoration Project is working towards eliminating four species of introduced mammals on New Island., including House Mice, with information being released from time to time on its Facebook page, most recently on bait-weathering trials (see below). Steeple Jason, another important seabird island in the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas*, has a House Mouse population but there are no current plans to eradicate it (click here).

An eradication that includes House Mice as a target (along with feral cats and pigs) is intended for the main Auckland Island. For it seems primarily financial reasons, planning for this expensive operation by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation was put on hold in 2020, with no recent public statement as to when it might go ahead.

“One of our trials uses a trail camera to track how the rodent bait fares during winter conditions. The bait is under a basket to keep the critters away, so we can see how it weathers over time” - New Island Restoration Project

Each eradication project needs to decide for itself quite how open with the public it should be, based on reasons that will vary from country to country. In the end, it will be their success or not that counts. Those of us committed to the conservation of seabirds hope that all the islands mentioned above will remain or will soon be free of their introduced mammals, including the “killer” mice of Gough, Marion and Midway – and that none of the eradications described above that are underway or planned “gang agley”.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 08 August 2023

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.

A Waved Albatross of the Galápagos Islands; photo by Ken Logan. Waved Albatrosses are one of nine ACAP Priority Populations. Research projects on ACAP Priority Populations are one of several opportunities that have been identified for small grants by the Agreement's Advisory Committee.

The Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels invites applications for the 2023 round of its Small Grants and Secondment Programmes. 

Both programmes provide funding towards proposals that progress the Agreement’s objective to achieve and maintain a favourable conservation status for albatrosses and petrels. Additionally, Secondment proposals should aim to promote capacity-building within Parties.

At the recent Thirteenth Meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC13), the Committee identified several opportunities for small grants and secondments. Applicants are encouraged to put forward proposals clearly addressing tasks contained within the work programmes of the Advisory Committee (see Annex 4, AC13 Report) and Secretariat (see Annex 5, AC13 Report) as relevant.

The Agreement’s Working Group Convenors, the Advisory Committee Chair or Vice-chair, or the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. can be contacted to assist in determining ACAP priority areas for proposals.

Applications will only be accepted from ACAP Parties, but can involve collaboration with institutions or individuals based elsewhere. Applications can be completed in English, French or Spanish and should be submitted to relevant ACAP National Contact Points.

Applications close at 5pm on Monday 2 October for Small Grant applications and on 16 October for Secondment applications.

The 2023 application forms, in all three ACAP official languages, are available to download here.

07 August 2023

Black-browed Albatrosses; photo by L. Campioni

Stephanie Good (Centre for Ecology & Conservation, University of Exeter, UK) and colleagues have published in the journal Endangered Species Research on best practices in assessing and managing seabird bycatch in fisheries.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Many seabird populations are declining, with fisheries bycatch as one of the greatest threats. Explicit risk criteria should be used to identify whether bycatch is a problem for particular species and fisheries, but these are often poorly defined. A variety of methods are used to determine the risk that a specific fishery is having an unsustainable impact on a seabird population. Up until October 2022, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) applied a general semi-quantitative productivity susceptibility analysis (PSA), a tool that has also been used widely by other management agencies for diverse taxa. Given the need to ensure fisheries risk assessments are robust and consistent, we examined how general PSAs perform when applied in 2 situations with good information on both the seabird population and fisheries bycatch rates and compare the outputs with those from 2 accessible and more quantitative tools: potential biological removal and population viability analysis. We found that risk scoring using the previous MSC version of the PSA was less robust and precautionary than using other approaches, given the steep declines observed in some seabird breeding populations. We make recommendations on how to select attributes for species-specific PSAs and, depending on the data available, identify the most appropriate risk assessment method to achieve a given objective. These should help ensure more consistent assessment and prioritisation of seabird bycatch issues, and improved ecosystem-based management of fisheries.”

Reference:

Good SD, Gummery M, McLennan S, Dewar K, Votier SC, Phillips RA (2023) Evaluating the appropriateness of risk-based approaches to assess the sustainability of fishery impacts on seabirds. Endang Species Res 51:161-172. https://doi.org/10.3354/esr01251 

4 August 2023

The new colour bands that are being used for the first time instead of the old three-colour combinations

On World Nature Conservation Day (28 July) all 33 chicks of the current breeding season in New Zealand’s mainland colony of globally Endangered and Nationally Vulnerable Northern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea sanfordi at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head were individually banded with alphanumeric plastic bands to allow for their easy identification when they return as pre-breeding adolescents. Males received a black band and females a yellow. The chicks also received a uniquely numbered stainless-steel band on their opposite legs. This season the letter for all the chicks is D, from now on each year will have its own letter on the colour bands. “Manaaki”, this season’s Royal Cam chick, was banded with black colour band D36 on his left leg, with the metal band on the right.

 Manaaki gets his bling at 189 days of age, video captured and edited by Lady Hawk

Big unit! Department of Conservation rangers Sharyn Broni (left) and Colin band Manaaki

Use of alphanumeric colour bands puts this long-studied colony on a par with most if not all other albatross monitoring colonies around the world; it should improve the quality of data collection over the old three-colour combinations, where the loss or fading of a band is known to cause identification problems. It also allows, especially when combined with colour options, for a far greater number of combinations.

Information, photographs and video from the Royal Cam Albatross Group New Zealand Facebook page.

One of this season’s Northern Royal Albatross chicks at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head approaching fledging regurgitated a bolus of squid beaks and plastic bottle caps and fragments, photograph by Julia, Department of Conservation Ranger, Taiaroa Head

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 03 August 2023