The world's biggest rat-hunt is being mounted to rid a South Atlantic island of the rodents eating their way through millions of endangered seabirds.
The first phase of the eradication programme will start next February on South Georgia in the hope of returning the island to its previous state as a globally important breeding site for seabirds. Over the centuriers, the rats arrived on South Georgia off whaling ships and sealers. Since then, their population has grown to several million, feeding on the eggs and live chicks of the ground-nesting birds that breed on the island, nearly 950 miles east of the Falklands.
Invasive rodents have been successfully removed from more than 300 islands worldwide but the South Georgia operation is by far the biggest and most ambitious, involving two helicopters spreading poisoned bait over every square metre of ice-free land on the 170km-long island, with the precision of GPS navigation. But the hunters have to make sure ...