Rat Island, Alaska
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Rat Island, Alaska
Rat Island (Aleut: Hawadax[1]) is an island in the Rat Islands archipelago of the western Aleutian Islands in the U.S. state of Alaska. The island has a land area of 10.3126 sq mi (26.7095 km²) and no permanent population. It is within the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. It is 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) in length and 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) in width.
The name is the English translation of the name given to the islands by Captain Fyodor Petrovich Litke in 1827 when he visited the Aleutian Islands on a voyage around the world.
The Rat Islands are very earthquake-prone as they are located on the boundary of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. In 1965, there was a major earthquake with the magnitude 8.7 in the Rat Islands.
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Rat population
The island was heavily infested with Brown rats, which are considered a nuisance invasive species due to their negative impact on the population of ground-nesting wild birds.[2]
The rats arrived on the island before 1780 due to a Japanese shipwreck.[3] Since then, the rats have had a devastating effect on local seabirds that have no natural defenses against the rats.[4] Invasive rats are also present on 16 other islands in the Aleutian chain.[3]
In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the Refuge, was formulating plans to eradicate the rats, without negatively affecting other species. Scientists considered the island a test case for other eradications in less isolated environments.[4] The eradication plan is modeled on a successful one to eliminate the Arctic fox from various Aleutian islands, where they were deliberately introduced for breeding.[3]
In June 2009, the island was declared rat-free for the first time in 229 years, although the site will be continually monitored for another two years for confirmation. In the preceding autumn, helicopters dropped brodifacoum poison onto the island from buckets for a week, which seems to have eliminated the rat population. Signs show that several species of birds, including Aleutian cackling geese, ptarmigan, peregrine falcons and black oystercatchers, are starting to nest again on the island.[5]
See also
- Campbell Island, New Zealand, the largest successful rat eradication.
References
- ^ Bergsland, K. (1994). Aleut Dictionary. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center.
- ^ Rats Wipe Out Seabirds on Alaska Island
- ^ a b c Ebbert, S.E.; Byrd, G.V. (2002). "Eradications of invasive species to restore natural biological diversity on Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge". In Veitch, C.R.. Turning the Tide: The Eradication of Invasive Species : Proceedings of the International Conference on the Eradication of Island Invasives. The World Conservation Union. ISBN 2-8317-0682-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=CI8531CO-dsC&pg=PA102&dq=rat.island+aleutian&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=5ddvI047_Rb3Hpqw0chJcW_Mlyo#PPA102,M1. Retrieved 2007-10-03.
- ^ a b "Biologists aim to wipe out Rat Island". Reuters. October 2, 2007. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0129716820071002. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
- ^ Alaska's Rat Island rat-free after 229 years
External links
- Rat Island Invasive Rat Eradication Project Environmental Assessment
- Rat Island: Block 1140, Census Tract 1, Aleutians West Census Area, Alaska United States Census Bureau
Coordinates: 51°48′09″N 178°17′51″E / 51.8025°N 178.2975°E
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