Reports from Rat Island Reflect Successes and Concerns

Authors

Date of this Version

6-11-2009

Comments

Published by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Abstract

After more than two weeks of intensive field monitoring on Alaska’s remote Rat Island, part of Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which was treated last year in an effort to eliminate invasive rats and restore seabird populations and other parts of the native ecosystem, biologists have found no sign of the invasive rats that have decimated native bird populations for more than 200 years. The same studies have documented that several bird species, including Aleutian cackling geese, ptarmigan, peregrine falcons, and black oyster catchers are nesting on the ten-square-mile island.