“Following a successful rat eradication, Puffins are nesting on Northern Ireland’s Isle of Muck for the first time in at least 25 years,” notes The Doomslayer.
The BBC reports:
Puffins have been seen on the Isle of Muck in County Antrim for the first time in years, after a major scheme to remove invasive brown rats.
It is the first time the vulnerable seabird has been recorded on the tiny island off Islandmagee since Ulster Wildlife took over the management of the seabird sanctuary 25 years ago.
A program of rat eradication began in 2017 and winter grazing has now been implemented to keep vegetation low, so predator cover is reduced….
Five puffins were spotted in 2024. Then in spring this year, cameras set up as part of the rat eradication programme caught two puffins coming and going from a nesting burrow on the cliff ledges.
Their behavior, bringing food back to the nest, was a positive sign that they were breeding….Annual surveys have [also] begun to record steady increases in eider ducks, guillemots, herring gulls and lesser-backed gulls on and around the island, year on year.
Artificial intelligence is being used to get rid of invasive species (like the stoats that devastated local bird populations in Scotland’s Orkney Islands).
Big meat-eating creatures have made a comeback in North America. And the “nine-banded armadillo is proliferating and expanding its range across the Eastern U.S..” Armadillos recently came to Virginia, Michigan, and Nebraska.
“Seabirds, crabs, geckos, and native flora are flourishing on Bikar Atoll and Jemo Islet—two small islands in the Marshalls—after conservationists successfully eradicated invasive rats,” reported The Doomslayer.
22 seabird species have returned to Mexico’s Pacific Islands, mainly due to efforts to remove invasive species that killed them or destroyed their habitat.
