Rat Island

predators in paradise and the world's greatest wildlife rescue

Hardcover

English language

Published Dec. 27, 2011 by Bloomsbury USA.

ISBN:
9781608191031

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (1 review)

"Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive-and massively controversial-wildlife rescue mission is under way.Islands, making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically disrupted by mainland predators-rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders, academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping …

4 editions

Great Book

5 stars

I've read this book 2 or 3 times, and listened to the Audio book at least twice. It's a great book about helping island ecosystems recover. Mostly from Rats, but there is a fair bit of information on feral cats as well (which are almost as destructive as Rats). It gives a good overview of how to get introduced species off an island, once they are established. Methodology has to adapt to species (Rats are adaptable), weather, cost, acceptable losses among non target species (You'll never achieve perfection) and any other factor that comes up. Great book!

Subjects

  • Predatory animals
  • Predation (Biology)
  • Wildlife rescue
  • NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection
  • Endangered species
  • Wildlife conservation
  • NATURE / General
  • NATURE / Islands

Places

  • Rat Islands
  • Rat Islands (Alaska)
  • Alaska