“Two decades after rats were eliminated from Lundy Island in the UK’s Bristol Channel, its seabird populations are soaring. The island’s total seabird population has risen from 7,351 in 2000 to more than 40,000 today, including 1,335 puffins and more than 150 breeding pairs of storm petrels, which had previously vanished from the island,” reports The Doomslayer.
The Independent explains:
Lundy Island, nestled in the Bristol Channel, has witnessed a remarkable resurgence in its seabird populations, with numbers soaring to over 40,000 – the highest recorded since the 1930s. This dramatic recovery comes two decades after the island was declared ‘rat-free,’ following a concerted conservation effort to eliminate the invasive predators.
Conservationists have revealed that species such as puffins, razorbills, and guillemots are thriving once more.
The island’s Manx shearwater population has seen a particularly impressive rebound, increasing from fewer than 600 birds in 2001 to more than 25,000 today, now accounting for 95 per cent of the species breeding in England. Puffins, once teetering on the brink of extinction on Lundy, have recovered from just 13 individuals in 2000 to 1,335 currently.
Even species thought lost, like the storm petrel, have returned, with over 150 pairs nesting since their first confirmed breeding in 2014.
Puffins have also returned to the Isle of Muck in northern Ireland, after a successful rat eradication campaign.
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.
Flamingos are flocking to Venice. The population of the critically endangered Siberian crane has risen by 50%.
The Dartford Warbler is making a comeback in England.
“The endangered Palau ground dove is showing signs of recovery on Ulong Island in the Pacific following a successful rat eradication,” reports The Doomslayer.
