The great South Georgia rat crisis

'Wanted: one Pied Piper for mass rat-luring operation. Must like travel." So might the job description have run for the manager of a major rodent cull planned this year for the remote British territory of South Georgia in the south Atlantic, where rats introduced by whaling ships are wiping out many of the island's 80 bird species.

In the end, the South Georgia Heritage Trust has opted for a rather more failsafe operation: deploying helicopters to scatter tonnes of rat poison across the island in a bid to stop the pests devouring eggs and chicks.

Though the scheme is billed as the largest rat-killing spree ever attempted, it's not the first time this technique has been used. A smaller pilot project was carried out on South Georgia last year, and rats were eliminated in this way on Campbell Island, New Zealand, in 2001. The RSPB also co-managed another cull last year on Henderson Island in the South Pacific; a ship travelled there from Seattle with two helicopters, sailing via several remote atolls, and eradicating bird-killing rats as it went. Who needs the Pied Piper?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/shortcuts/2012/feb/13/great-south-georgia-rat-crisis

Goats and rats removed from two Fijian islands

Invasive species Cast Away in Fiji
December 2011. Goats and rats have been removed from two Fijian islands in a joint operation conducted by BirdLife International's Fiji Programme and the National Trust of Fiji aimed at protecting unique wildlife on Monuriki and Kadomo. "This is a massive achievement which will provide benefits for the iguanas, birds, plants and people of these islands", said Sialesi Rasalato from BirdLife International.

Seabirds and iguana
The Mamanuca island chain is a well-known tourist destination and nationally important for some unique and threatened wildlife. The islands of Monuriki and Kadomo are among Fiji's most critical islands for burrowing seabirds and endemic iguana.

Critically Endangered Fijian Crested Iguana
Monuriki was the location for the Tom Hanks film Cast Away which depicts his successful attempts to survive on the island following a plane crash. In real life, the 41 hectare island is home to less than a hundred Critically Endangered Fijian Crested Iguana Brachylophus vitiensis which are found on only a few islands, in the dry western side of the Fijian archipelago. Both Monuriki and Kadomo also provide vital habitat for nationally significant breeding colonies of Wedge-tailed ShearwaterPuffinus pacificus. Thousands of the fish-eating seabirds have excavated burrows across the islands in which to rear their chicks, and can be heard making their strange ‘baby-crying' calls after dark.

In 1999 and 2003, the National Trust of Fiji surveyed a few islands in the Mamanuca Group detecting a rapid decline in the iguana population as a result of major habitat degradation by goats. In 2009, BirdLife International undertook surveys that showed that rats and goats were also posing severe threats to the breeding seabirds on both islands.

Introduced by humans and alien to Fiji, rats eat many life forms including eggs, seeds, and insects, whilst goats eat all plants within reach and trample fragile seabird burrows.

Together these pests have substantially altered the ability of native plants and animals to exist on the islands and, if left unchecked, would lead to the loss of many including the shearwaters and iguanas. "Most documented extinctions, and present causes for decline among Pacific island birds, are the result of invasive alien species like rats and goats", said Elenoa Seniloli of BirdLife International.

Eradication of goats and rats
To deal with these threats, the National Trust of Fiji and BirdLife International carried out an intensive and complex operation to rid the two islands permanently of goats and rats.

For the goats, those that could be mustered and caught - by the local Yanuya Rugby Team - were taken to the mainland, while all remaining animals were later eliminated by professional hunters from New Zealand using trained sniffer dogs. The rats were eradicated by spreading specially-formulated rodenticide from a helicopter in a hi-tech procedure using GPS equipment and a specifically designed spreader bucket which could calibrate required bait-drops. If no sign of either pest are detected after two years, Monuriki and Kadomo islands will be officially declared rat and goat-free.

It's now vitally important that these alien creatures don't return, and project partners are calling for all visitors to check their boats and equipment for unwanted stowaways before landing on the islands. "It has taken years of preparation and work to rid these introduced pest animals from Monuriki and Kadomo, and a careless visitor could bring them back in a day", said Jone Niukula of the National Trust of Fiji.

"We ask visitors to be especially careful", added Joeli Vadada - landowner and National Trust of Fiji Volunteer Ranger for Monuriki Island. "Visitors to the islands need to check everything before they go ashore for stowaway seeds, lizards, rodents and insects."

BirdLife is now developing a bio-security programme that will provide further information and training to the Islands communities and tourist operators, enabling them to prevent pests from getting back to the Islands. "We also intend to work with the landowners in developing projects that enable them to benefit from the islands natural resources in a sustainable way such as through eco-tourism", noted Mrs Seniloli.

12th Island restored
This is the 12th successful island restoration programme completed by the BirdLife International Fiji Programme. With over 300 islands in Fiji there are many opportunities to eradicate unwanted pests and improve the future for biodiversity and people.

The planning, consultations, financing, technical assistance and implementation of the goat and rat operations have required numerous partnerships within Fiji and around the world. In communicating the project's success, BirdLife International and the National Trust of Fiji acknowledge that this result would not have been possible without the efforts of many, including Nadroga/Navosa Provincial Council, the Fiji Department of Environment, the Fiji Police Force, Biosecurity Authority of Fiji, Mamanuca Environment Society, the Pacific Invasives Initiative, Ross Wharfe, Luke Robertson, New Zealand Department of Conservation, skilled hunters, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the UK Darwin Initiative, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund and European Community and the landowners of Monuriki and Kadomo Mataqali Vuna-i-vi and Mataqali Namatua, Taukei Yanuya, and the village of Yanuya (Koro ko Yanuya).

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=1&listcatid=1&listitemid=12364

Alien rats take on prey's role

Invasive rats are compensating for the loss of native pollinators in New Zealand, scientists report.

The rats, which are responsible for devastating the native pollinator populations, are attracted to the flowers for their nectar.

The results could mean that the decline of pollinating animals worldwide does not spell the end for all native plants.

The results are published in a Royal Society journal.

Almost 90% of the world's flowering plants are pollinated by animals.

Insect pollination alone is estimated to be worth £141bn ($224bn) each year, and according to a report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) bees pollinate over two-thirds of the world's crops.
So the decline of the world's pollinating animals has unsurprisingly sparked concerns about lower yields and serious long-term food shortages among farmers and governments.

Conservationists also predict the loss of many animal-pollinated plants.

"New Zealand offers a really interesting and rare opportunity to look at what the consequences of species extinction [are] for... pollination," explained conservation biologist David Wilcove from Princeton University, US.

"We have this situation where almost all of the native vertebrates in New Zealand - birds, bats and reptiles - have disappeared from the North island... largely due to predation by rats," he added.

Read more here ...

CONSERVATIONISTS TAKE AIM AT PITCAIRN PESTS

Rats decimating endangered petrel chicks

The Henderson Island Petrel will become extinct within decades unless action is taken at the remote, uninhabited World Heritage site. MV Aquila sets sail from Seattle this week, carrying two helicopters which will drop poison bait across the island, using methods developed in New Zealand.

Jonathan Hall, the project coordinator, says the island is home to more than ten globally threatened species.

http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2011/June/06-29-13.htm

Rodent eradication declared a success in South Georgia

EDITOR'S NOTE: This news story is a couple of months old, but is, we feel, important enough to include anyway...

South Georgia is a remote, inhospitable island clinging on in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Despite the hostile climate, the ocean waters around South Georgia are extremely productive and provide food for millions of sea birds and marine mammals. For the huge numbers of birds that feed in the southern Atlantic, South Georgia is the place they call home. 29 species of bird breed on the island, including the wandering albatross, king penguin and the South Georgia pipit, which is found nowhere else in the world.

Unfortunately South Georgia has been colonised by invasive rodent species. These introduced rodents feed on the eggs and young of ground-nesting native birds, which can offer no resistance. Every year thousands, perhaps millions, of young birds are eaten alive by rats. Rats and mice were first brought to South Georgia by whaling ships in the 19th Century. Since then, with no natural predators, they have proliferated on the island. To see the damage these rodents can do, have a look at ARKive's rather grim, but fascinating video of an introduced rat predating on a Henderson petrel chick. Henderson Island is similar to South Georgia: it is a remote, inhospitable island that supports a high diversity of - often threatened - bird life. On Henderson Island, as on South Georgia, rodents have a devastating impact on native bird populations.

South Georgia Heritage Trust, which is responsible for wildlife conservation on South Georgia, recognises that the only way to ensure the survival of native birds is to fully eradicate rats from the island. Previous research has shown that the only feasible method of eradicating rodents on an island the size of South Georgia - 80,000 hectares - is to spread toxic bait by helicopter. This is a massive undertaking and, if successful, South Georgia will be the largest island ever cleared of rodents. The eradication programme is aided by South Georgia's geography: the island is divided by glaciers into several zones. Rodents can't cross these glaciers, meaning that they will not re-infest baited areas.

The eradication programme began in March and conservationists reported that the first phase has been a success. Around 50 tonnes of rodenticide were spread by helicopter in March, over around 13% of the island. Inspections have found no evidence of live rats in this area - a great outcome. Although some wildlife will inevitably be harmed by the rodenticide, the shape, colour and size of pellets have been carefully designed to minimise their attractiveness to non-rodents.

Read on...

Rats On Plane Ground Qantas Jet In Sydney

By SARAH DiLORENZO
06/ 1/11 11:32 PM ET

SYDNEY -- A flight crew checking the cabin of a Qantas plane before takeoff found rats in a compartment holding medical equipment, grounding the plane for more than a day, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

Crews did a visual check of the plane Tuesday afternoon and found no more rats or any damage. The rodents had been in a cabinet holding a defibrillator. The plane returned to service Thursday morning.

Passengers had not yet boarded the Sydney-to-Brisbane flight and were instead put on another plane.

A Qantas spokeswoman called the incident "very unusual." She declined to be named, citing policy.

But Scott Connolly of the Transportation Workers Union told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio on Thursday that members have had concerns about hygiene and sanitation on Qantas flights.

The spokeswoman denied that was the case. "This is a very irregular occurrence," she said.

Qantas, Australia's national carrier, has experienced a series of troubles in recent months, including an engine explosion and forced landings.

Earlier this week, a Qantas flight from Dallas, Texas, to Australia made an unscheduled stop on a Pacific island after pilots feared they might run out of fuel because of strong headwinds. The Qantas spokeswoman said the airline was committed to the route – which is new and one of the world's longest for Boeing 747 jets.

http://weirdnews.aol.com/2011/06/02/rats-on-plane-australia_n_870189.html

Red rodent shows up at Colombian nature lodge after 113 years

The red-crested tree rat (Santamartamys rufodorsalis) had not been recorded since 1898 and was thought possibly extinct—that is until one showed up at 9:30 PM on May 4th at a lodge in El Dorado Nature Reserve in northern Colombia.
"He just shuffled up the handrail near where we were sitting and seemed totally unperturbed by all the excitement he was causing," said Lizzie Noble, a British volunteer with Fundación ProAves a conservation group in Colombia focusing on birds.

The nocturnal rodent hung out for a couple hours, allowing Noble and another volunteer, Simon McKeown, to take photos. Noble and McKeown were there to monitor endangered amphibians, but on this night, at least, they found themselves captivated by a long-lost rodent.

Described as about the size of a guinea pig, the red-crested tree rat—or if that's not long enough for you: the red crested soft-furred spiny-rat—had only been known from two skins previously. But the species was odd enough to be given its own genus, Santamartamys.

With its long absence it's almost certain the species is quite rare, and researchers say they expect it will be listed by the IUCN Red List as is Critically Endangered. Already, the species is believed to be imperiled by feral cats.

Located in the Santa Marta mountain range, the 2,000 acre (809 hectare) El Dorado Nature Reserve, which was established by ProAves and other groups, has been the site of a number of remarkable incidents recently. In 2007 the Santa Marta screech owl (Otus gilesi) was discovered in the reserve—still undescribed by researchers—while last year the first ever photo of a living Santa Marta Sabrewing (Campylopterus phainopeplus), a hummingbird, was taken in the park. But the red-crested tree rat may be the biggest surprise yet.

"We are so proud that our El Dorado Nature Reserve has provided a safe haven for this enigmatic little guy to survive," said Lina Daza, Executive Director of ProAves. "The discovery exemplifies why we buy forested properties known to be important for endangered wildlife yet at imminent risk of being destroyed."

The reserve is home to a high number of endemic birds and amphibians, some globally threatened with extinction.

"The El Dorado Nature Reserve represents the ultimate Noah's Ark, protecting the last populations of many critically endangered and endemic flora and fauna; a living treasure trove like no other on earth," said Dr. Paul Salaman, a scientist with World Land Trust-US who confirmed the identity of the species.

ProAves established the El Dorado Nature Resevere in 2005 with support from American Bird Conservancy, World Land Trust-US, Fundación Loro Parque and Conservation International, and the US's Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act.

"Had we not worked with our partners to establish this reserve, it is reasonable to believe this species would still remain something that was only talked about in science journals," said George Fenwick, President of American Bird Conservancy. "Now we need to work with our partners to take steps to see that this species continues to be a part of our world,"

Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
May 18, 2011

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0518-hance_redtreerat.html

'Success' in South Georgia rat eradication

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13282806

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The brown rat has been a catastrophic introduction to South Georgia

Conservationists say they are pleased with early efforts to kill rats on South Georgia, in what is the biggest rodent eradication campaign in history.

No-one really knows how many rats inhabit the island in the South Atlantic, but it could be millions.

Introduced on the ships of sealers and whalers in the 19th and 20th Centuries, the rodents have had a devastating impact on local seabird populations.

But the laying of toxic bait in part of the island seems to have had success.

Some 50 tonnes of rodenticide were spread by helicopters in March over a contained zone hemmed in by glaciers. Subsequent inspections on the ground found only dead rats.

The kill represented just the first phase in the project, and covered a mere 13% of the rat-infested land area of South Georgia.

The helicopters flew back and forth along GPS grid lines to distribute the bait

Nonetheless, the South Georgia Heritage Trust says it has been hugely encouraged by the results.

"Prior to the baiting, if you went out at night, there were rats running everywhere," explained project leader Professor Tony Martin from Dundee University, UK.

"A week after the bait went down - not a sign of a single rat. We even put out little batches of bait pellets that were particularly attractive to the rats. We saw them being taken for the first few days, and then there were no more pellets taken."

First surveyed by the great explorer James Cook in 1775, the UK overseas territory is rightly famed for its wildlife.

Thousands of tourists visit the 170km long island to see its seals, penguins, albatrosses and other birds.

The pipit is Earth's southern-most songbird

But as abundant as these animals appear, their populations are as nothing compared to the days before industrial sealers and whalers used the British protectorate as a base for their ships and processing plants.

Although these industries have long gone, their legacy remains in the form of the brown rat which leapt on to shore and ran riot across the island.

The rodents kill the fat chicks of ground-nesting seabirds. They eat them alive - albatrosses, petrels, prions; anything the rats can get their teeth into, and that includes chicks that may be several times their size.

Particular concern surrounds the South Georgia Pipit (Anthus antarcticus), the most southerly songbird on the planet; and the South Georgia Pintail (Anas georgica georgica), a duck species found only on South Georgia.

"These simply will not nest in the presence of rats," said Dr Mike Richardson who chairs the steering committee of the South Georgia Heritage Trust Habitat Restoration Project.

"Rats have driven them into small refuges, which tend to be the small offshore islands around South Georgia's coast. But on the mainland, all along its north coast, South Georgia has become a no-go area for these birds."

Rat eradication has been tried on other islands around the world, notably off New Zealand and Australia - but nothing on the scale being attempted in South Georgia.

Ordinarily, such a campaign would probably be impossible, such is the size of the landmass and the number of rats present. But the sub-Antarctic island is marked by numerous glaciers that divide up the territory into convenient killing zones that can be cleared one by one. The rats cannot cross the ice tongues and so conservationists can be sure rodents from neighbouring zones will not re-infest baited areas at a later date.

The March baiting campaign used two helicopters to cover 150-sq-km of ground centred on Thatcher Peninsula. The bait pellets, donated by Bell Laboratories in the US, were spread from large hoppers slung beneath the aircraft. The helicopters flew back and forth along GPS grid lines, ensuring every hectare was littered with about 2kg of rodenticide.

The glaciers act as barriers to the rats

This first phase cost about £1.6m, and the South Georgia Heritage Trust calculates the project will require a further £5m and two campaign seasons to completely remove the rodents from the island.

Inevitably, there is collateral damage in the form of birds and other wildlife also consuming the bait. But the shape, colour and size of pellets have been carefully designed to minimise accidental deaths.

And Professor Martin says these small losses have to be set against the benefits to nesting populations that will accrue in the years ahead.

"When Captain Cook first set foot on the island in 1775 this was perhaps the most important seabird breeding island in the world," he told BBC News.

"By far the majority of the birds have been removed by one agent - rats - which man introduced. What we're doing is turning back the clock two centuries to try to get the island back to where it was; and it's something we do believe can be accomplished."

The bizarre tale of the rat which took a cigarette to bed...

When Nelly Banks saw her rat’s cage burst into flames, she never expected to see her beloved pet again.


But she got quite a shock when the rascal rodent ran around on the floor – after sparking a full scale 999 alert.

Nelly’s pet – called No Name – stole a smouldering cigarette butt from her ashtray and took it to bed with him.

But the cigarette continued to smoulder, set fire to her cage and left her entire flat on Westminster Road, Morecambe, smoke-logged.

The 43-year-old has no idea how the rat made the miracle escape. She said: “He is a little pincher, he is always taking stuff and hiding it and this time he took one of my cigarettes and put it into his cage which is obviously flammable.

“He had beer cans and bits of paper and all sorts in there, so it did not take much to send it up.

“I don’t know what he thought he was doing, it was about 3am and I woke up and there was smoke everywhere.

“I just grabbed a blanket and put it over the cage and then rushed outside to get a fire extinguisher because there was no way I was leaving him to take his chances.”

But, when she was outside the flat, her neighbours stopped her from rushing back in to rescue her pet as the fire brigade arrived.

Mark Bateson, of the green watch crew at Morecambe fire station, said he believed the rat was building a nest and scurried away through an open door when it realised its home was about to go up in flames.

He said: “Fortunately, the fire alarm detected the fire and everyone got out, but people need to be careful with carelessly discarded cigarettes.”

A spokesman for the Places for People housing association, the flat owners, said there was “slight fire damage”.

Nelly added: “He’s in the dog house, but I’m too soft to be upset with him forever.”

The bizarre tale of the rat which took a cigarette to bed...

When Nelly Banks saw her rat’s cage burst into flames, she never expected to see her beloved pet again.


But she got quite a shock when the rascal rodent ran around on the floor – after sparking a full scale 999 alert.

Nelly’s pet – called No Name – stole a smouldering cigarette butt from her ashtray and took it to bed with him.

But the cigarette continued to smoulder, set fire to her cage and left her entire flat on Westminster Road, Morecambe, smoke-logged.

The 43-year-old has no idea how the rat made the miracle escape. She said: “He is a little pincher, he is always taking stuff and hiding it and this time he took one of my cigarettes and put it into his cage which is obviously flammable.

“He had beer cans and bits of paper and all sorts in there, so it did not take much to send it up.

“I don’t know what he thought he was doing, it was about 3am and I woke up and there was smoke everywhere.

“I just grabbed a blanket and put it over the cage and then rushed outside to get a fire extinguisher because there was no way I was leaving him to take his chances.”

But, when she was outside the flat, her neighbours stopped her from rushing back in to rescue her pet as the fire brigade arrived.

Mark Bateson, of the green watch crew at Morecambe fire station, said he believed the rat was building a nest and scurried away through an open door when it realised its home was about to go up in flames.

He said: “Fortunately, the fire alarm detected the fire and everyone got out, but people need to be careful with carelessly discarded cigarettes.”

A spokesman for the Places for People housing association, the flat owners, said there was “slight fire damage”.

Nelly added: “He’s in the dog house, but I’m too soft to be upset with him forever.”

Rat in curry prompts cull at Bangladeshi university

University officials in Bangladesh have ordered a major rat extermination drive after rodent meat found its way into chicken curry served to students.


The incident happened at Rajshahi University in western Bangladesh.

"One student detected the head of the rat while eating his lunch. That student instantly suffered a stomach upset," a spokesman told the BBC.

Soon after the incident hundreds of angry students staged a demonstration demanding action against the chef.

The chef has now been suspended and handed over to police who have been called in to investigate the incident.

"I told the students to stop eating in the dining hall of the university for two days. A drive to kill the rats in the dining hall is going on," university proctor Chowdhury Mohammad Zakaria told the BBC.

"It is a very unfortunate event and some 300 angry students gathered and protested against the unhygienic condition of food served in the university's dining hall.

"I must say that if I found rat meat in my food, I also would not be able to control my temper."

It was not immediately clear whether the rat meat was mixed with chicken curry intentionally.

In September 2009, a farmer was crowned Bangladesh's champion rat catcher after leading a team which he said killed more than 80,000 rodents in a month.

Mokhairul Islam was awarded a colour television at a ceremony attended by 500 farmers and officials in Dhaka.

The University of Rajshahi is one of the largest universities in the country and the largest in the northern region of Bangladesh.

Rat in curry prompts cull at Bangladeshi university

University officials in Bangladesh have ordered a major rat extermination drive after rodent meat found its way into chicken curry served to students.


The incident happened at Rajshahi University in western Bangladesh.

"One student detected the head of the rat while eating his lunch. That student instantly suffered a stomach upset," a spokesman told the BBC.

Soon after the incident hundreds of angry students staged a demonstration demanding action against the chef.

The chef has now been suspended and handed over to police who have been called in to investigate the incident.

"I told the students to stop eating in the dining hall of the university for two days. A drive to kill the rats in the dining hall is going on," university proctor Chowdhury Mohammad Zakaria told the BBC.

"It is a very unfortunate event and some 300 angry students gathered and protested against the unhygienic condition of food served in the university's dining hall.

"I must say that if I found rat meat in my food, I also would not be able to control my temper."

It was not immediately clear whether the rat meat was mixed with chicken curry intentionally.

In September 2009, a farmer was crowned Bangladesh's champion rat catcher after leading a team which he said killed more than 80,000 rodents in a month.

Mokhairul Islam was awarded a colour television at a ceremony attended by 500 farmers and officials in Dhaka.

The University of Rajshahi is one of the largest universities in the country and the largest in the northern region of Bangladesh.

Rats living in fancier digs seek richer rewards

LOOKING UP
Some rats in this lab showed a rodent version of optimism — taking chances more often that chocolate would be available — after their living conditions were upgraded.N. Brydges


Give lab rats a week at the Rodent Ritz and they’re not thinking Cheerios so much anymore. They’re thinking chocolate.

Upgrading their real estate changed rats’ bias in guessing what to do about ambiguous cues in a lab test, says cognitive neuroscientist Nichola Brydges of the University of Edinburgh.

A week after moving into a bigger, better furnished cage, rats had grown more likely to take a chance that a confusing signal would lead to a bit of chocolate to eat — an indication of optimism — instead of just half a Cheerio. Rats had been trained that a wrong choice in responding to a cue would mean not getting any reward, so they had an incentive to choose correctly, Brydges and her colleagues report in an upcoming issue of Animal Behaviour.

Experiments have shown that like people, other animals can develop a pessimistic bias under adverse conditions. But, says Brydges, “It is rare for people to look at what makes animals optimistic.” The new rat study is the first to show a clear link between changing an animal’s environment and optimism, she says.

The research team developed a sophisticated means to test for bias in the rats, says Hanno Würbel of Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, who has analyzed the effects of animals’ lab conditions on experimental results. For example, the study protocol has built-in controls that rule out other possible explanations for the results such as differences in motivation among the rats. “I consider this the most convincing evidence of cognitive bias in animals, and of environmental effects on it, to date,” he says.

To probe for optimism, Brydges and her colleagues trained 12 rats to scamper over sandpaper and then go to one cup if the sandpaper had a fine grain or a different cup if it was coarse-grained. Researchers doled out a lush chocolate reward for one of the grades of sandpaper but the less-exciting cereal for the other. At each presentation of sandpaper, researchers put out just one treat, rewarding the rat only for the correct answer.

But the researchers occasionally presented an ambiguous cue, sandpaper with an intermediate grain. Rats still made a choice and scurried to one of the cups. Before the home makeovers, though, rats on average responded to ambiguous cues rather pessimistically, tending to guess that the right answer was the chocolate-filled cup only about one time in five on average. “I had expected 50/50,” Brydges says.

Half the rats, which stayed in standard laboratory housing, continued to guess the cereal cup was correct most of the time. The rest of the rats — whose new digs had extra-deep wood shavings and such amusements as wood blocks, cardboard tubes and even a plastic house — took a chance on the chocolate cup more than three times in five.

Würbel says he would like to see whether the findings hold in an expanded test. More interesting to him, though, is what would happen after a few weeks when the rats got used to the larger and more complex cage. “In rats,” he says, “it appears to be much more difficult than, for example, in mice to provide an environment that is stimulating enough for the animals to keep them active, inquisitive, and ... possibly ... happy.” It remains to be seen whether the chocolate-seeking optimism is due to the improvement in living conditions, or the passing novelty of the change in conditions.

Susan Milius

Rats living in fancier digs seek richer rewards

LOOKING UP
Some rats in this lab showed a rodent version of optimism — taking chances more often that chocolate would be available — after their living conditions were upgraded.N. Brydges


Give lab rats a week at the Rodent Ritz and they’re not thinking Cheerios so much anymore. They’re thinking chocolate.

Upgrading their real estate changed rats’ bias in guessing what to do about ambiguous cues in a lab test, says cognitive neuroscientist Nichola Brydges of the University of Edinburgh.

A week after moving into a bigger, better furnished cage, rats had grown more likely to take a chance that a confusing signal would lead to a bit of chocolate to eat — an indication of optimism — instead of just half a Cheerio. Rats had been trained that a wrong choice in responding to a cue would mean not getting any reward, so they had an incentive to choose correctly, Brydges and her colleagues report in an upcoming issue of Animal Behaviour.

Experiments have shown that like people, other animals can develop a pessimistic bias under adverse conditions. But, says Brydges, “It is rare for people to look at what makes animals optimistic.” The new rat study is the first to show a clear link between changing an animal’s environment and optimism, she says.

The research team developed a sophisticated means to test for bias in the rats, says Hanno Würbel of Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, who has analyzed the effects of animals’ lab conditions on experimental results. For example, the study protocol has built-in controls that rule out other possible explanations for the results such as differences in motivation among the rats. “I consider this the most convincing evidence of cognitive bias in animals, and of environmental effects on it, to date,” he says.

To probe for optimism, Brydges and her colleagues trained 12 rats to scamper over sandpaper and then go to one cup if the sandpaper had a fine grain or a different cup if it was coarse-grained. Researchers doled out a lush chocolate reward for one of the grades of sandpaper but the less-exciting cereal for the other. At each presentation of sandpaper, researchers put out just one treat, rewarding the rat only for the correct answer.

But the researchers occasionally presented an ambiguous cue, sandpaper with an intermediate grain. Rats still made a choice and scurried to one of the cups. Before the home makeovers, though, rats on average responded to ambiguous cues rather pessimistically, tending to guess that the right answer was the chocolate-filled cup only about one time in five on average. “I had expected 50/50,” Brydges says.

Half the rats, which stayed in standard laboratory housing, continued to guess the cereal cup was correct most of the time. The rest of the rats — whose new digs had extra-deep wood shavings and such amusements as wood blocks, cardboard tubes and even a plastic house — took a chance on the chocolate cup more than three times in five.

Würbel says he would like to see whether the findings hold in an expanded test. More interesting to him, though, is what would happen after a few weeks when the rats got used to the larger and more complex cage. “In rats,” he says, “it appears to be much more difficult than, for example, in mice to provide an environment that is stimulating enough for the animals to keep them active, inquisitive, and ... possibly ... happy.” It remains to be seen whether the chocolate-seeking optimism is due to the improvement in living conditions, or the passing novelty of the change in conditions.

Susan Milius

San Jose Pet Store Looks To Find Homes For Over 1,000 Rats

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- An unusual rescue mission in the South Bay was underway Monday night as animal groups sought to find homes for more than a thousand rats that were discovered during the filming of a reality television show.


The population all started with one pregnant pet rat whose owner didn't separate the males and females of the litter.

The rescued rodents were brought to Andy's Pet Shop in downtown San Jose Saturday and will be featured in an upcoming episode for A&E's reality show "Hoarders."

Danville-based North Star Rescue was one of several animal groups which recently recovered the animals from a home near Palmdale where one man kept them as pets.

“The house was literally covered in rats,” said North Star Rescue founder Lauren Paul. “There were rats in every room. Hundreds in every room, so you had to walk carefully not to step on any of them.

The pet shop's extra room was covered with stacks of containers with rats inside waiting to be checked by a veterinarian.

In the last 24 hours---25 baby rats have been born at the temporary rescue shelter.

“We had three litters born last night, two the night before,” said Andy's Pet Shop manager Zoe Thoel. “So it's been nuts. Our estimate is about 1000 to 1200 without the new babies being born.”

Workers Monday wrapped cages with extra wire to prevent any rat escape.

The rats won't be up for adoption until December 5th. The shop has already received calls from as far as New York by people interested in taking on a couple of new pets.

The animals will be spayed and neutering and adopted in pairs of boys or girls.

San Jose Pet Store Looks To Find Homes For Over 1,000 Rats

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- An unusual rescue mission in the South Bay was underway Monday night as animal groups sought to find homes for more than a thousand rats that were discovered during the filming of a reality television show.


The population all started with one pregnant pet rat whose owner didn't separate the males and females of the litter.

The rescued rodents were brought to Andy's Pet Shop in downtown San Jose Saturday and will be featured in an upcoming episode for A&E's reality show "Hoarders."

Danville-based North Star Rescue was one of several animal groups which recently recovered the animals from a home near Palmdale where one man kept them as pets.

“The house was literally covered in rats,” said North Star Rescue founder Lauren Paul. “There were rats in every room. Hundreds in every room, so you had to walk carefully not to step on any of them.

The pet shop's extra room was covered with stacks of containers with rats inside waiting to be checked by a veterinarian.

In the last 24 hours---25 baby rats have been born at the temporary rescue shelter.

“We had three litters born last night, two the night before,” said Andy's Pet Shop manager Zoe Thoel. “So it's been nuts. Our estimate is about 1000 to 1200 without the new babies being born.”

Workers Monday wrapped cages with extra wire to prevent any rat escape.

The rats won't be up for adoption until December 5th. The shop has already received calls from as far as New York by people interested in taking on a couple of new pets.

The animals will be spayed and neutering and adopted in pairs of boys or girls.

Attack of the rats

The local farmers call it a flood; an inundation that happens every 50 years.


Others believe it to be an act of God, an inevitability.

It isn't water flooding the precious farmland in north-eastern India, but rats.

A once in a generation, gigantic plague of rats, that ruins crops and leaves people starving.

A rat army so big, so mythical, that until now some scientists did not believe it was real.

This explosion in the rodent population, leading to swarms of hungry pests, is caused by a glut in the food supply, namely bamboo seeds, researchers have confirmed.

And it is a perfect example of how the simple relationship between two apparently innocuous species, a tall grass and a tiny rodent, can turn the ecology of a whole region upside down: wiping out wildlife, destroying agriculture and leaving people destitute.

Worse, scientists suspect that climate change may create even bigger rat armies in the future.

Bamboo carpet
Bamboo forest covers more than 26,000 square kilometres throughout the north-eastern state of Mizoram, extending into the Chin Hills of Burma and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.


This species of bamboo (Melcocanna baccifera) is invaluable for farmers whose entire livelihood is based on what they can grow.

It provides a building material, clothing and even food - in the form of bamboo shoots.

Ecologically though, it is an aggressive plant that has annihilated its competition, and carpeted the area.

Approximately every 50 years, though, that carpet of forest dies off.

Whatever the environmental conditions, an internal clock signals to each plant that it is time to flower, set seed and die.

"It's a way for the bamboo to ensure that the seeds survive," explains Steve Belmain, an ecologist from Greenwich University in London.


"But when the bamboo seed falls - you end up with 80 tonnes of seed per hectare on the ground.

"That's 80 tonnes of food just lying there waiting to be eaten."

For Dr Belmain and his colleagues, the most recent bamboo flowering, which began in 2004 and will continue to 2011, provided a unique opportunity to study an event that only occurs every half century.

"Before this, all we had was anecdotes from 50 years ago," he told BBC News.

"It had become a legend - many people who live in the area now weren't alive during the last outbreak."

'Rat armies'
It is only now that scientists have accepted that the "bamboo masting" is the trigger for the outbreaks.

The infrequency and scale of the event rendered it somewhat mythical.

"The many fantastic stories make it much harder for scientists to take it seriously and separate fact from fiction," says Dr Belmain.

When his colleagues interviewed the communities in the Hill Tracts, some people talked about "rat armies" that appear to work together.

And many believed the rat plagues to be an act of God.

The big problem for local farmers is that their low-growing rice crops make easy pickings for the voracious pests.


Dr Belmain says that, when the rats come, some people simply do not bother planting crops. They just accept that it is pointless.

He and his colleague Grant Singleton from the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, Philippines, have just compiled and edited a new book, Rodent outbreaks - Ecology and impacts.

The book brings together the findings of teams of scientists working in the region, studying the local ecology and agricultural practices.

On top of widespread starvation, Dr Singleton tells BBC News, that the rat floods turn the whole forest ecology "upside down".

"There is a huge impact on insects and other wildlife too - habitats and food are simply wiped out," he says.

Pest apathy
But, despite the fact that the locals see their crops ravaged, there is little to no drive to do anything about it.

The scientists say there is an overwhelming feeling of apathy in the region.

And in the lowlands of Burma, cyclone Nargis - an event that itself killed an estimated 140,000 people - actually made the problem even worse.

Dr Singleton explains: "Because the cyclone was so intense and so much life was lost, there were a lot of areas abandoned that would normally be cropped.


"And these areas became overgrown with grasses and weeds that were a major breeding ground for the rodents.

"Also smallholder farmers recovered from the cyclone at different stages, leading to the crops being planted at markedly different times.

"Therefore the rice crops matured at different times and provided food on the table of the rat for much longer than usual."

All of this led to the rats breeding for longer and to their young maturing and breeding before the cropping season ended. The result: another explosion in the rat population.

There was anecdotal evidence that the cyclone also wiped out predators, including snakes, that would otherwise have preyed on the rats.

This, along with abandoned land and fewer humans to catch the rodents, left them with little control over their numbers.

Between June and September 2009, community rat collection campaigns conducted in just a few townships in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta collected more than 2.6 million rats.

Dr Belmain says the huge number of rodents was related to the cyclone.

"Outbreaks of this magnitude have not been recorded in the previous 30 years in this delta," he tells BBC News.


The scientists believe that outbreaks of rodent and other crop pest populations following extreme weather events [are] likely to become more common with the onset of climate change.

Unusual pests
Not just one rodent species involved, but one of the main culprits in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta is Bandicota savilei.

This common rat is a native species, rather than an invasive predator that has found itself in a new environment with no strong competition.

It seems though that the ecological landscape is so warped by the bamboo masting that this has become a native species gone bad.

The rats can produce a litter every three weeks and the baby rats reach sexual maturity in just 50-60 days.

For the scientists, it is a frustrating problem, because the solutions are relatively straightforward.


Dr Belmain says: "Most of the methods used for pest control are not working at all."

"In India, individual farmers often buy a handful of poison at the market and spread it around."

One solution could be a simple plastic sheeting fence - containing holes that lead into rat traps.

So Dr Belmain and his colleagues hope to reach local farmers and teach them that by laying efficient traps at the right times, they could reduce the amount of food they lose.

Dr Belmain says: They're either engrained in apathy because they've tried and failed to control it or they don't appreciate how much they're losing to rats.

"So you really have to hold their hands and show them their lives can be better.

"People can do a lot more if they're organised."

Preparation, it seems, will be key to facing the next rat army.

Hear more about the rat floods from Steve Belmain in an interview with Science in Action on the BBC World Service

By Victoria Gill

Science and nature reporter, BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9198000/9198744.stm

Attack of the rats

The local farmers call it a flood; an inundation that happens every 50 years.


Others believe it to be an act of God, an inevitability.

It isn't water flooding the precious farmland in north-eastern India, but rats.

A once in a generation, gigantic plague of rats, that ruins crops and leaves people starving.

A rat army so big, so mythical, that until now some scientists did not believe it was real.

This explosion in the rodent population, leading to swarms of hungry pests, is caused by a glut in the food supply, namely bamboo seeds, researchers have confirmed.

And it is a perfect example of how the simple relationship between two apparently innocuous species, a tall grass and a tiny rodent, can turn the ecology of a whole region upside down: wiping out wildlife, destroying agriculture and leaving people destitute.

Worse, scientists suspect that climate change may create even bigger rat armies in the future.

Bamboo carpet
Bamboo forest covers more than 26,000 square kilometres throughout the north-eastern state of Mizoram, extending into the Chin Hills of Burma and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.


This species of bamboo (Melcocanna baccifera) is invaluable for farmers whose entire livelihood is based on what they can grow.

It provides a building material, clothing and even food - in the form of bamboo shoots.

Ecologically though, it is an aggressive plant that has annihilated its competition, and carpeted the area.

Approximately every 50 years, though, that carpet of forest dies off.

Whatever the environmental conditions, an internal clock signals to each plant that it is time to flower, set seed and die.

"It's a way for the bamboo to ensure that the seeds survive," explains Steve Belmain, an ecologist from Greenwich University in London.


"But when the bamboo seed falls - you end up with 80 tonnes of seed per hectare on the ground.

"That's 80 tonnes of food just lying there waiting to be eaten."

For Dr Belmain and his colleagues, the most recent bamboo flowering, which began in 2004 and will continue to 2011, provided a unique opportunity to study an event that only occurs every half century.

"Before this, all we had was anecdotes from 50 years ago," he told BBC News.

"It had become a legend - many people who live in the area now weren't alive during the last outbreak."

'Rat armies'
It is only now that scientists have accepted that the "bamboo masting" is the trigger for the outbreaks.

The infrequency and scale of the event rendered it somewhat mythical.

"The many fantastic stories make it much harder for scientists to take it seriously and separate fact from fiction," says Dr Belmain.

When his colleagues interviewed the communities in the Hill Tracts, some people talked about "rat armies" that appear to work together.

And many believed the rat plagues to be an act of God.

The big problem for local farmers is that their low-growing rice crops make easy pickings for the voracious pests.


Dr Belmain says that, when the rats come, some people simply do not bother planting crops. They just accept that it is pointless.

He and his colleague Grant Singleton from the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, Philippines, have just compiled and edited a new book, Rodent outbreaks - Ecology and impacts.

The book brings together the findings of teams of scientists working in the region, studying the local ecology and agricultural practices.

On top of widespread starvation, Dr Singleton tells BBC News, that the rat floods turn the whole forest ecology "upside down".

"There is a huge impact on insects and other wildlife too - habitats and food are simply wiped out," he says.

Pest apathy
But, despite the fact that the locals see their crops ravaged, there is little to no drive to do anything about it.

The scientists say there is an overwhelming feeling of apathy in the region.

And in the lowlands of Burma, cyclone Nargis - an event that itself killed an estimated 140,000 people - actually made the problem even worse.

Dr Singleton explains: "Because the cyclone was so intense and so much life was lost, there were a lot of areas abandoned that would normally be cropped.


"And these areas became overgrown with grasses and weeds that were a major breeding ground for the rodents.

"Also smallholder farmers recovered from the cyclone at different stages, leading to the crops being planted at markedly different times.

"Therefore the rice crops matured at different times and provided food on the table of the rat for much longer than usual."

All of this led to the rats breeding for longer and to their young maturing and breeding before the cropping season ended. The result: another explosion in the rat population.

There was anecdotal evidence that the cyclone also wiped out predators, including snakes, that would otherwise have preyed on the rats.

This, along with abandoned land and fewer humans to catch the rodents, left them with little control over their numbers.

Between June and September 2009, community rat collection campaigns conducted in just a few townships in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta collected more than 2.6 million rats.

Dr Belmain says the huge number of rodents was related to the cyclone.

"Outbreaks of this magnitude have not been recorded in the previous 30 years in this delta," he tells BBC News.


The scientists believe that outbreaks of rodent and other crop pest populations following extreme weather events [are] likely to become more common with the onset of climate change.

Unusual pests
Not just one rodent species involved, but one of the main culprits in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta is Bandicota savilei.

This common rat is a native species, rather than an invasive predator that has found itself in a new environment with no strong competition.

It seems though that the ecological landscape is so warped by the bamboo masting that this has become a native species gone bad.

The rats can produce a litter every three weeks and the baby rats reach sexual maturity in just 50-60 days.

For the scientists, it is a frustrating problem, because the solutions are relatively straightforward.


Dr Belmain says: "Most of the methods used for pest control are not working at all."

"In India, individual farmers often buy a handful of poison at the market and spread it around."

One solution could be a simple plastic sheeting fence - containing holes that lead into rat traps.

So Dr Belmain and his colleagues hope to reach local farmers and teach them that by laying efficient traps at the right times, they could reduce the amount of food they lose.

Dr Belmain says: They're either engrained in apathy because they've tried and failed to control it or they don't appreciate how much they're losing to rats.

"So you really have to hold their hands and show them their lives can be better.

"People can do a lot more if they're organised."

Preparation, it seems, will be key to facing the next rat army.

Hear more about the rat floods from Steve Belmain in an interview with Science in Action on the BBC World Service

By Victoria Gill

Science and nature reporter, BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9198000/9198744.stm

Rats targeted in mass poisoning to save endangered birds

British scientists are to mount a £1.7m operation to save a seabird from extinction by eradicating rats from one of the world's most remote islands.


Nearly 50 million pellets of rat poison will be dropped on one of the Pitcairn Islands – the last British Overseas Territory in the Pacific – to safeguard the future of the Henderson petrel, which is found nowhere else.

Most of the petrels' chicks are being eaten alive by the rats with which the island is infested. The population has tumbled to a fraction of its historic levels and may soon have disappeared. As a result, the United Nations has officially warned Britain that Henderson Island was in danger of losing its World Heritage Site status, granted in 1988 due to its position as one of the few atolls in the world whose ecology has been "practically untouched by a human presence".

In fact, the island was inhabited by Polynesian settlers several hundred years ago, who subsequently left for reasons that remain a mystery. But they brought with them a population of the non-native Pacific rat, which feeds on the island's wildlife and has already resulted in the extinction of four endemic bird species – three doves and a sandpiper – a fact only apparent by the bones which are left behind.

Now the remaining birds are all at risk, including four endemic species of landbird, the Henderson reed-warbler, the Henderson crake, the Henderson fruit-dove and the Henderson lorikeet. But most threatened are the seabirds, four species of ground-nesting petrels – dove-sized relatives of the albatross – of which the endemic Henderson petrel presents the crucial concern.

Its population, once thought to number in the millions, is down to about 16,000 pairs and each year more than 25,000 petrel chicks (95 per cent) meet a gruesome death by being eaten alive by the rats, leaving very few to survive to adulthood.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is mounting the operation, due to take place next August, providing the full funding of £1.7m can be found for the complex project, which will involve contractors sailing from New Zealand on a ship carrying two helicopters which will drop the pellets. More than £1m has already been raised and last week the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs awarded £200,000 to the scheme, leaving a further £400,000 to be found.

Most of Henderson is a rocky coral plateau covered in dense vegetation, making it impossible (and potentially very damaging environmentally) to lay the rat bait by hand, said Jonathan Hall, the RSPB co-ordinator for the project. The bait – cereal pellets containing an anti-coagulant called brodifacoum – will be scattered by helicopter.

The amount would be 98 tonnes, Mr Hall said which, at 500,000 per tonne, equals 49 million pellets. The whole island will have to be covered. Should a single pregnant rat be left the population might be rapidly restored.

It is not thought the rat poison will be consumed by other wildlife and once the rats are removed, the RSPB believes the populations of all the native birds will rise as they are freed from competition and predation by the non-native rodents.

"Henderson will be the largest tropical or sub-tropical island in the world to be cleared of rodents," said Mr Hall. "Once cleared, we could also find new species of insect, which are currently at population levels which are too low to be detected due to rat predation – and who knows what other secrets the island may still hold?"

Invasive rats, often coming from ships, are among the greatest threat to island wildlife across the world and are thought to be responsible for numerous extinctions and declines, especially amongst seabirds, as they prey on eggs, chicks and adults.

But over the past 20 years, techniques of large-scale rodent eradication have been developed and rats have now been successfully cleared from 284 islands across the world, many in Australia and New Zealand, allowing native wildlife to prosper again.

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor


http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/rats-targeted-in-mass-poisoning-to-save-endangered-birds-2124596.html

Rats targeted in mass poisoning to save endangered birds

British scientists are to mount a £1.7m operation to save a seabird from extinction by eradicating rats from one of the world's most remote islands.


Nearly 50 million pellets of rat poison will be dropped on one of the Pitcairn Islands – the last British Overseas Territory in the Pacific – to safeguard the future of the Henderson petrel, which is found nowhere else.

Most of the petrels' chicks are being eaten alive by the rats with which the island is infested. The population has tumbled to a fraction of its historic levels and may soon have disappeared. As a result, the United Nations has officially warned Britain that Henderson Island was in danger of losing its World Heritage Site status, granted in 1988 due to its position as one of the few atolls in the world whose ecology has been "practically untouched by a human presence".

In fact, the island was inhabited by Polynesian settlers several hundred years ago, who subsequently left for reasons that remain a mystery. But they brought with them a population of the non-native Pacific rat, which feeds on the island's wildlife and has already resulted in the extinction of four endemic bird species – three doves and a sandpiper – a fact only apparent by the bones which are left behind.

Now the remaining birds are all at risk, including four endemic species of landbird, the Henderson reed-warbler, the Henderson crake, the Henderson fruit-dove and the Henderson lorikeet. But most threatened are the seabirds, four species of ground-nesting petrels – dove-sized relatives of the albatross – of which the endemic Henderson petrel presents the crucial concern.

Its population, once thought to number in the millions, is down to about 16,000 pairs and each year more than 25,000 petrel chicks (95 per cent) meet a gruesome death by being eaten alive by the rats, leaving very few to survive to adulthood.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is mounting the operation, due to take place next August, providing the full funding of £1.7m can be found for the complex project, which will involve contractors sailing from New Zealand on a ship carrying two helicopters which will drop the pellets. More than £1m has already been raised and last week the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs awarded £200,000 to the scheme, leaving a further £400,000 to be found.

Most of Henderson is a rocky coral plateau covered in dense vegetation, making it impossible (and potentially very damaging environmentally) to lay the rat bait by hand, said Jonathan Hall, the RSPB co-ordinator for the project. The bait – cereal pellets containing an anti-coagulant called brodifacoum – will be scattered by helicopter.

The amount would be 98 tonnes, Mr Hall said which, at 500,000 per tonne, equals 49 million pellets. The whole island will have to be covered. Should a single pregnant rat be left the population might be rapidly restored.

It is not thought the rat poison will be consumed by other wildlife and once the rats are removed, the RSPB believes the populations of all the native birds will rise as they are freed from competition and predation by the non-native rodents.

"Henderson will be the largest tropical or sub-tropical island in the world to be cleared of rodents," said Mr Hall. "Once cleared, we could also find new species of insect, which are currently at population levels which are too low to be detected due to rat predation – and who knows what other secrets the island may still hold?"

Invasive rats, often coming from ships, are among the greatest threat to island wildlife across the world and are thought to be responsible for numerous extinctions and declines, especially amongst seabirds, as they prey on eggs, chicks and adults.

But over the past 20 years, techniques of large-scale rodent eradication have been developed and rats have now been successfully cleared from 284 islands across the world, many in Australia and New Zealand, allowing native wildlife to prosper again.

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor


http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/rats-targeted-in-mass-poisoning-to-save-endangered-birds-2124596.html