Each exposed rectangle represents 100 hectares of Marion Island funded to date

The “Sponsor a Hectare” campaign of the Saving Marion Island's Seabirds Mouse-free Marion Project has reached its first milestone.  A total of a little over 2012 hectares generating over two million South African Rands has now been sponsored.  Why this exact figure?  Well, this is the size of New Zealand’s Antipodes Island from which an estimated 200 000 introduced House Mice Mus musculus were successfully eradicated by a helicopter bait drop in 2016, with confirmation of success coming two years later.

The cost of the Antipodes Island Million Dollar Mouse project was partially covered by a crowd-funding exercise that aimed to raise a million New Zealand Dollars from non-government sources.  To encourage contributions from Kiwis (and from outside New Zealand) the project’s website and Facebook page regularly updated a map of the islands with crossed-out mice signifying progress.  With this as inspiration, ACAP’s Information Officer proposed a similar campaign for Marion Island to BirdLife South Africa, which is partnering with the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment to rid the island of its mice in 2013.

Four mice gone!  Early days with Antipodes Island’s Million Dollar Mouse campaign

ACAP Latest News reached out to New Zealand Department of Conservation’s Stephen Horn who as Project Manager led the Antipodes eradication (and is a member the M-FM’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Group).  In reply he writes “The eradication of mice from Antipodes Island was powered by people contributing to the project.  School kids, businesses, individuals, groups, and everyday people getting involved were the reason the project got off the ground and succeeded.  With mice gone, land birds such as snipe and pipits are thriving and there are signs of burrowing seabirds recovering from the extensive damage caused by mice.  I was privileged to lead the project on Antipodes Island and help people reach their goal and save its precious wildlife.  From the Antipodes Islands in New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic region to South Africa’s remote Marion Island the challenges are immense but worthy and every dollar and hectare count.  I urge you to get involved to provide seabirds and the unique wildlife on Marion Island somewhere safe to breed and help undo the damage caused by mice”.

Stephen Horn on Macquarie Island

So what is the next campaign challenge for Marion’s Sponsor a Hectare initiative?  Surely it has to be 6520 ha funded, the size of Gough Island in the South Atlantic, which the UK’s Gough Island Restoration Programme aims to rid of its of its albatross-killing mice in a few months’ time.  Would be good to reach this second milestone by the time the last helicopter load of bait is dropped on Gough this year, but with the aim to crowd fund 30 000 ha there will still be a long way to go!

Follow the Antipodes Island eradication to ultimate success in the archives of ACAP Latest News.

With thanks to Stephen Horn.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 May 2021

"Examples of Flesh-footed Shearwater boluses containing anthropogenic debris on Lord Howe Island. Panels A/B and C/D show the same bolus intact (top
panel) and separated into components in the lab (bottom panel). Photo: S. Stuckenbrock".  From the publication

Alex Bond (Bird Group, The Natural History Museum, Tring, UK) and colleagues have published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin showing that 100% of examined boluses from Flesh-footed Shearwaters Ardenna carnepeis (Near Threatened) from Australia's Lord Howe Island contained plastic items.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Plastic production and pollution of the environment with plastic items is rising rapidly and outpacing current mitigation measures.  Success of mitigation actions can only be determined if progress can be measured reliably through incorporation of specific, measurable targets.  Here we evaluate temporal changes in the amount and composition of plastic in boluses from Flesh-footed Shearwaters during 2002–2020 and assess their suitability for measuring progress against national and international commitments to reduce plastic pollution.  Plastic in the shearwater boluses showed a generally decreasing pattern from 2002 to 2015 and increasing again to 2020.  The colour and type of plastics in boluses was comparable to items recovered from live and necropsied birds, but a much smaller sample size (~35 boluses/year) was required to detect changes in plastic number and mass over time. We therefore suggest shearwater boluses are a low-effort, high-statistical power monitoring tool for quantifying progress against environmental policies in Australia.”

The problem: Flesh-footed Shearwaters ingest large amounts of plastic, photograph by Ian Hutton

With thanks to Janine Dunlop, Niven Librarian, FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town.

Reference:

Bond, A.L., Hutton, I. & Lavers, J.L. 2021.  Plastics in regurgitated Flesh-footed Shearwater (Ardenna carneipes) boluses as a monitoring tool.  Marine Pollution Bulletin doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112428.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 May 2021

Elisa (now aged four) holds her poster prize with her older sister, Constanza

Last year ACAP collaborated with Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) to support the inaugural World Albatross Day on 19 June (‘WAD2020’) by producing line drawings for a colouring-in competition aimed at children (click here).  The total of 124 entries received (see ACAP's Facebook album) were assigned to five age classes which were then judged by an international panel of artists.  Winners in each category received an on-line certificate to print out but were also promised an albatross poster in the mail.  COVID-19 then got in the way making international post between countries problematic, notably between Australia (from where the ACAP Secretariat was undertaking the mailings) and countries in South America.

Elisa’s winning entry

Waiting patiently on the mail for more than half a year in her home in Ñuñoa, Santiago de Chile after winning the three-to-five-year category with her colourful Campbell Albatross has been Elisa Ahumada López, then aged three.  Good news that at long last she has now received her poster, smiling proudly with her older sister Constanza in the photo above.  The poster depicting all the World’s albatrosses is by ABUN artist Di Roberts.  A high-resolution version suitable for printing (along with other WAD2020 posters) is available online from the ACAP website here.

The Campbell Albatross photographed by Kirk Zufelt off North Cape, New Zealand from which Lea Finke made the line drawing that Elisa coloured in

With thanks to Elisa’s mother, Paula Carolina López Molina, for permission to use the photograph of her daughters.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 May 2021

Photograph of the vagrant Black-browed Albatross by cell phone through a 30-70x telescope, from Per-Magnus Åhrén

An adult-plumaged Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris (Least Concern) was photographed at a distance flying at sea in the narrow sound of Öresund between Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden on 25 April 2021.  The bird was also seen the next day in the same area with no winds when it was attacked by nine White-tailed Sea Eagles Haliaeetus albicilla. It was not seen after that despite concerted searches by many birders on both sides of the sound.

Reportings of Black-browed Albatrosses (possibly of the same individual) have been made in the North Sea and surrounding waters over the last four to five years.

Read a summary of vagrant Southern Hemisphere albatrosses in the Northern Hemisphere here.

Information from the Pelagics. Seabirds Birding Worldwide Facebook page.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 06 May 2021