Did the Rat Island restoration effort kill 41 bald eagles?

[BrklynLiberal]

I am sure that everything will be done to make sure that the rat poisoning will not be responsible for the deaths of the eagles and other birds.....whether it is actually true or not. I have seen how poisoning of rats in Central Park led to the deaths of some of the redtailed hawks that lived nearby....

Last year, one of the world’s most aggressive island restoration projects was launched to poison all the invasive rats on Alaska’s Rat Island, located in the western part of the Aleutian islands. But the extermination project may have taken an unexpected toll: a recent survey of the island recovered the corpses of 41 bald eagles and 186 glaucous-winged gulls – raising the possibility that the birds died after consuming poisoned rats.

“When you go to an island after a winter, its not surprising to find bird carcasses,” says U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Bruce Woods, “but not these numbers.” There were only four breeding pairs of the federally protected bald eagles residing on the island last year, but the population in the Aleutians numbers 2,500.

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In any case, the recent tragedy represents a blow to a powerful restoration strategy that has already pitted conservationists against landowners and animal rights activists in New Zealand, California, and Hawaii. The corpses were sent to the National Wildlife Health Center’s laboratory in Madison, Wisc., and a determination on the cause of death should be available in late June. At least 75 percent of the carcasses were juveniles.

The good news is that the survey team reports that Aleutian cackling gees, ptarmigan, peregrine falcons and black oystercatchers are all nesting on the island -- and rats appear to be absent. “If the rats are truly gone,” Woods says, “then the long-term benefits to the ecoystem will outweigh the loss of these birds.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=did-the-rat-island-restoration-effo-2009-06-12

[Blue_In_AK]

1. It's sad about the eagles, but

the rats had overrun that island so badly that something had to be done to restore the balance. Not to minimize the loss of the eagles, but they are very far from threatened in Alaska. They're everywhere.

[cagesoulman]

2. Let's get a bunch of unemployed guys to go out and shoot the rats

You save the eagles, create jobs and ABC can make a reality show out of it.

[Bandit]

3. Fifty years ago we had a bounty on eagles

They were a pest back then and are getting that way once again. I don't mourn the loss of forty eagles. It doesn't even make a noticeable dent in their population.