VANCOUVER — An airborne assault will begin this fall in the ongoing war to rid important bird-nesting islands of non-native rats in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve.
As part of a five-year, $2.2-million program, officials will employ a helicopter to drop rat poison over two sites in Juan Perez Sound: 400-hectare Murchison Island and 316-hectare Faraday Island.
At-risk species such as ancient murrelets have vanished from their nesting sites there over the years due to the rats.
“That’s the problem, they’re so voracious,” Parks Canada project manager Laurie Wein said in an interview Wednesday. “They’ll eat the eggs, the young chicks. They can have a dramatic impact on ground-nesting seabirds.”
When the rats run out of birds, they turn to intertidal areas to forage on marine life. “They’ll eat anything. They’re not picky.”
In the first phase of the program, in 2011, officials launched a ground-based program, placing poison bait boxes on two other islands — 95-hectare Bischof and 10-hectare Arichika — to eradicate the rats. The results are being monitored.
