Late is an isolated and uninhabited island located about 55 km WSW of the island of Vava’u, in the Kingdom of Tonga. The biological integrity of Late is threatened by invasive Pacific rats that were historically introduced to the island. This report assesses the feasibility of restoring Late through the removal of invasive rats, and describes options, recommendations, and challenges to realizing a successful project.
Data on rats in Cook Islands
Enhancing the biosecurity of Pohnpei’s island ecosystems by putting together efforts to eradicate rats
Rats are invasive species in Tuvalu. Rattus rattus, or black rats, are rampaging through Tuvalu’s atolls and gnawing through the country’s chief export crop – coconuts. This dataset contains a brief introduction into a project that was implemented by a locally-recruited retired rodent management expert who showed coconut farmers how to dispose of the rats in an environmentally-friendly manner.
A completion CEPF project report - The project was designed to address the threats posed by two invasive alien species Pacific Rat Rattus exulans and Yellow Crazy Ant Anoplolepis on the islands of Nu'utele and Nu'ulua.
The Palmerston rat eradication program ran from August-September 2023. NZ Department of Conservation's Emmanuel Oyston, field team leader of the eradication, sent weekly updates on their progress - their updates are available here.
The world is facing a biodiversity crisis. Nowhere is that more apparent than on oceanic islands where invasive species are a major threat for island biodiversity. Rats are one of the most detrimental of these and have been the target of numerous eradication programmes; a well-established conservation tool for island systems.
Following the incursion of rats (Rattus rattus) on Taukihepa (Big South Cape Island; 93.9 km²) off southern New Zealand in 1963, and the subsequent extirpation of several endemic species, the New Zealand Wildlife Service realised that, contrary to general belief at the time, introduced predators do not reach a natural balance with native species and that a safe breeding habitat for an increasing number of at risk species was urgently needed.
Rat eradication is a highly effective tool for conserving biodiversity, but one that requires considerable planning eff ort, a high level of precision during implementation and carries no guarantee of success. Overall, rates of success are generally high but lower for tropical islands where most biodiversity is at risk. We completed a qualitative comparative review on four successful and four unsuccessful tropical rat eradication projects to better understand the factors influencing the success of tropical rat eradications and shed light on how the risk of future failures can be minimised.
Williamson and Sabath (1982) have demonstrated a significant relationship between modern population size and environment by examining atoll area and rainfall in the Marshall Islands. The present work seeks to extend that argument into prehistory by examining the relationship of ancient habitation sites and size of aroid pit agricultural systems to atoll land area and rainfall regime along the 1,500-3,500 mm precipitation gradient in the Marshall Islands.
The study of dispersal processes of small mammals, and especially of rodents, has a wide range of applications and until recent years there were few publications discussing the
colonisation of 'oceanic' islands by small mammals (cf. Crowell, 1986; Diamond, 1987; Hanski, 1986;Heany, 1986; Lomolino, 1986).
At the time of the POBSP visit, cats (Felis domestica), dogs