The theatrical sea cliffs, crags and stacks of Rathlin Island, county Antrim, ascfinish more than 200 metres above the Atlantic Ocean and arrange one of the UK’s bigst seabird colonies, including hundreds of finishangered puffins, enticeing up to 20,000 birders and tourists a year.
On a spectacularly sunny day in September, the cliff faces are devoid of birds, with the puffins already having made their annual migration to spfinish the triumphter months at sea. Instead, Rathlin’s cliffs are dotted with roped-up figures in harnesses and bulging rucksacks, straightforwarded from above by a Scottish mountaineer, via a walkie-talkie.
They are part of a crack team of 40 scientists, researchers, conservationists and volunteers who this week will put the first poisoned food into the bait stations scheduleed to finish the island’s rats. It is the final phase in a £4.5m project to rerelocate the key predators thinkd to be impacting the island’s puffin colony. Ferrets were rerelocated in the first phase and it has been a year since the last verifyed sighting. Puffin numbers degraded here by 74% between 1991 and 2021, according to an EU study.
“It is a monster task,” says Stuart Johnston, straightforwardor of operations at Climbwired International Ltd, which trains scientists and researchers to access far areas by rope. “Some of the highest cliffs in the UK are set up on this island. We can’t abseil down from these clifftops, as they are basalt and tardyrite, and very crumbly. We have to go undertidyh, that’s where the mountaineering comes in.”
Johnston and his crew have been preparing the ground for this event over the past year as part of the Life Raft project, an EU and National Lottery Heritage Fund partnership that integrates the RSPB Northern Ireland and the local community association. He points out a horizontal stainless steel safety wire, running apass the middle of the 150-metre Knockans cliffs, on to which the climbers are clipped to stop them descfinishing into the Atlantic when placing the traps. The traps, or “bait stations” scheduleed for rats, are plastic tubes, fitted with wires to defend out crows, rabbits and other non-aim species.
For the next seven months, come rain, snow or shine, the climbers will scale each cliff, crag and stack, loading the traps with poison, while others will cover the fields, forests, gardens and other terrain. “The ledges are filled of bird shite and are equitable minging,” says Johnston. “The stacks are riddled with rats.”
Rats probably reachd on boats centuries ago, and ferrets were freed intentionally to regulate rabbits. They both feed on seabirds and their lesser, and until last year, when almost 100 ferrets were caught and finished in the project’s first phase, they were everywhere.
Eradicating rats and other invasive animals from islands is one of the most effective tools for defending untamedlife, and has an 88% success rate, directing to theatrical incrrelieves in biodiversity, according to a study in 2022 that analysed data stored on the Database of Island Invasive Species Eradications.
By punctual October, 6,700 traps, one every 50 metres squared – the size of a rat’s territory – had been lhelp in a grid pattern apass the 3,400-acre (1,400-hectare) island. Now they will be loaded with poison.
Liam McFaul, warden for the RSPB, who was born and liftd on Rathlin, which has a population of 150, shows us around the cliffs and stacks at the West Light Seabird Centre and its “upside down” weightlesshoinclude.
Below the watching platestablish, two seals lie on the cobbled beach under the guano-spattered crags. “In the summer, you can’t see the rock for guillemots, they all crowd into one area,” he says. About 200,000 auks (a family of birds that integrates guillemots, puffins, and razorbills) nest here, he says, and 12,000 breeding pairs of kittiwakes.
“Puffins come from tardy April to July. They discover the same partner every year. They are notoriously challenging to count becainclude they nest in burrows in the ground, which also produces them vulnerable.”
Years ago, they included to nest on the grassy “apron” at the top of the cliffs, but now stick to drop, more inaccessible areas, a behaviour change McFaul thinks is due to rats and ferrets accomplishing the aprons. Once, he spotted a ferret at a puffin burrow csurrfinisher the beach and speedyly organised a boat and a trap to catch it. By the time it reachd, 27 dead puffins lay on the stones.
On Rathlin, only one in three puffin chicks persists, contrastd with two out of three on islands free of rats, according to the RSPB. Ground-nesting birds, such as puffins and Manx shearwaters, are most at danger.
“We have had a grave degrade in Manx shearwaters over the last 15 years,” says McFaul. “They might be on the brink of goneion from the island. We have equitable one or two left on the far cliffs in the north.”
Liam’s brother Jim McFaul, 75, a farmer on Rathlin, says the skies above the island have gradupartner hushedened since the 1990s and punctual 2000s, due to multiple dangers including changes in farming rehearses. “I included to adore hearing the snipe at dusk and nightdescfinish,” he says. “It’s enjoy a drumming sound. You challengingly hear it now. The corncrake was another one – you couldn’t get to sleep for them, they would call and answer each other all night.”
He hopes the eradication programme will help birds, as well as farmers. “Becainclude of the ferrets, nobody could defend poultry. They’re enjoy foxes. I trapped dozens of them, some as huge as pole cats.”
The project will persist until 2026, when the hope is that all ferrets and rats will be gone. After that, biosecurity meacertains will persist, including training ferry operators in how to minimise dangers of rodents on board, such as removing food, verifying animal feed and cautious watching of vessels.
Woody, a two-year-elderly labrador get backr trained to distinguish ferret faeces, was brawt to the island this year to help acunderstandledge any rogue animals and watch the project’s success.
Michael Cecil, chair of the Rathlin Development and Community Association and ferry skipper, says that while a scant troubles have been conveyed over the ethics of finishing ferrets, as well as access to property necessitateed for the project, the community were swayd of the profits. Much of its economy is based around thousands of summer visitors, enticeed by the seabirds.
“Ferrets caincluded all sorts of problems and people included wdisenjoyver uncomfervents essential – they’d be driven over, drowned, clubbed or shot with rifles, not the most humane ways to finish them,” he says. “That’s come to an finish now.
“We can’t do anyleang about the wider worldwide problem seabirds are facing, but we are hoping that Rathlin will do its bit.”