While the presence of rats in homes may cause anxiety and annoyance, they rarely result in driving out the residents. But that is exactly what happened to theinhabitants of the 10-square-mile Hawadax Island off the coast of Alaska, almost 230 years ago. Now thanks to a five-year effort by conservationists, the eerily silent 'Rat Island' as it had been dubbed for many years, has been returned to its rightful owners - birds!
Hawadax Island is part of a chain of volcanic islands in the Bering Sea called theAleutian Islands.The rats that arrived there in 1780 when a Japanese ship carrying them broke down nearby, completely decimated the native population because the environment of the island was not built to defend its animals from these predators. The main issue? The Island is treeless, which meant that the birds were accustomed to building their nests low in the ground, giving the rodents easy access to both eggs and baby chicks. As years passed, the birds that had called the island home for thousands of years, became endangered and eventually, disappeared completely.
Then slowly but surely, the birds began to return. Unfortunately, some of the pioneers were inadvertently killed from the remnants of the rat poison that had been used to wipe out the rodents. But now it seems things are becoming more stable and the Island is starting to increasingly look like its former self. Before the transformation 'Hawadax' AKA 'Rat Island' was a silent and ghostly place with bird bones, snail remains and rocks covered in rat feces.
Resources:news.yahoo.com,businessinsider.com
Listen to the Article:
Do you think the birds sensed that the rats were gone or was their return just a coincidence?
No comments:
Post a Comment