Baiting completed on Gough Island
The Gough Island Restoration team has announced that it has completed baiting across the island as part of its delayed mouse eradication programme.
Introduced House Mice have been causing havoc with the island's native breeding seabirds in recent years, with countless chicks lost to predation and, as reported earlier this year, even some adult Tristan Albatrosses falling victim to the rodents.
Eradicating House Mice from Gough Island should mean that Tristan Albatross and other native seabirds will show greatly improved breeding success in the future (J Cleeland).
After being announced in 2018, the baiting project was originally scheduled to go ahead in 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic meant that the RSPB and the Tristan da Cunha government had to abandon these plans and airlift the team home.
The team tweeted: "JOB DONE! Baiting on #Gough is complete! Now there's nothing more we can do to increase our chances of eradicating the mice."
It is hoped that results of the baiting project will start to tell in the next breeding season, when a reduced mouse population should ensure that a greater number of seabird chicks are able to fledge.