dRathlin Island's spectacular cliffs, cliffs and stacks rise more than 200 meters above the Atlantic Ocean and are home to one of the UK's largest seabird colonies, including hundreds of endangered puffins, which attract 20,000 bird watchers and tourists a year.
On a spectacularly sunny September day, the cliff faces are devoid of birds, as puffins have already migrated annually to spend the winter months at sea. Instead, there are rope-drawn figures on the Rathlin cliffs and inflated backpacks manned by walkie-talkies from above by a Scottish mountaineer.
They are part of a team of 40 scientists, researchers, conservationists and volunteers who this week will place the first poisoned food at bait stations designed to kill the island's rats. It is the final phase of a £4.5 million project to eradicate key predators thought to be affecting the island's puffin colony. The ferrets were destroyed in the first phase and it has been a year since the last confirmed sighting. The number of puffins has decreased by 74% between 1991 and 2021, according to an EU study.
“It's a mammoth task,” says Stuart Johnston, chief operating officer of Climbwired International Ltd, which trains scientists and researchers to access remote areas using ropes. “This island is home to some of the highest cliffs in England. We cannot descend from the top of these cliffs because they are made of basalt and laterite and very brittle. We have to go down and that's where climbing comes into play.
Johnston and his team have been preparing the ground for the event for the past year as part of the Life Raft project, an EU and National Lottery heritage funding partnership involving the Northern Ireland RSPB and a local community association. He points to a horizontal stainless steel safety cable that runs through the center of the 150-meter-high Knockens Rocks, to which climbers hold on to prevent them from falling into the Atlantic Ocean when setting traps. Traps or “bait stations” designed for rats are plastic tubes connected to deter crows, rabbits and other non-target species.
For the next seven months, rain, snow or shine, climbers scale every cliff, rock and stack, and load traps with poison, while others cover fields, forests, gardens and other terrain. Johnston says: “There are strips full of bird droppings. “The floors are infested with rats.”
Rats may have arrived on ships centuries ago, and ferrets were deliberately released to control rabbits. Both feed on seabirds and their young, and were everywhere until last year, when about 100 ferrets were captured and killed during the first phase of the project.
Removing rats and other invasive animals from islands is one of the most effective tools for wildlife conservation and has an 88% success rate, leading to a dramatic increase in biodiversity, according to a 2022 study that examined data stored in the Island Invasive Species Eradication Database. .
In early October, 6,700 traps, one every 50 meters (the size of a rat's territory), were set in a grid pattern on the 3,400-acre (1,400-hectare) island. Now they will be poisoned.
RSBB director Liam McFall, born and raised in Rathlin, population 150, shows us the rocks and stacks of the West Light Seabird Center and its “upside down” lighthouse.
Below the viewing platform, two seals lay on a pebble beach under guano-covered rocks. “In summer, the murres can't see the rock, they all congregate in one area,” he says. Around 200,000 auks (a family of birds that includes feathered feathers, puffins and razorbills) nest here and 12,000 pairs of gulls breed.
“Puffins arrive from late April to July. They find the same partner every year. Because they nest in burrows in the ground, they are very difficult to count and are vulnerable.”
Years ago, they nested in grassy “aprons” on top of cliffs, but now they stay in low, inaccessible areas, a behavioral change that McFall believes is due to mice and ferrets reaching the aprons. Once, he saw a ferret in a puffin burrow near the beach and prepared a boat and trap to quickly capture it. When he arrived, 27 dead puffins were lying on the rocks.
On Rathlin, only one in three puffin chicks survive, compared to two in three on rat-free islands. According to the RSPB. Ground-nesting birds, such as puffins and Manx shearwaters, are most at risk.
“We've had a serious decline in shearwaters over the last 15 years,” McFaul says. “They may be on the verge of extinction on the island. We only have one or two in the far northern rocks.
Liam's brother Jim McFall, 75, a Rathlin farmer, says that since the 1990s and early 2000s, the skies over the island have gradually calmed due to a number of threats, including changes in agricultural practices. “I like to listen to snipe at dusk and at night,” he says. “It's like the sound of a drum. You're not listening now. The corncrake is different: they can't sleep, they call and answer each other all night.
He hopes the eradication program will help both the birds and the farmers. “Because of the ferrets, no one could raise chickens. They are like foxes. I caught dozens of them, some as big as polar cats.
The project will continue until 2026, when all ferrets and rats are expected to disappear. After that, biosecurity measures will continue, including training of vessel operators to reduce the risk of rodents on board, food removal, inspection of animal feed, and careful monitoring of vessels.
Woody, a two-year-old Labrador retriever trained to detect ferret droppings, was brought to the island this year to help identify any stray animals and monitor the success of the project.
Rathlin Community and Development Association president and waterman Michael Cecil said the community insisted on the benefits, although some concerns were raised about the ethics of killing ferrets and access to property needed for the project. Much of its economy is based on thousands of summer visitors attracted by seabirds.
“The ferrets caused all kinds of problems and people used any means necessary: running them over, drowning them, beating them or shooting them with guns, not the most humane ways of killing them,” he says. “This has come to an end now.
“We can't do anything about the vast global problem facing seabirds, but we hope Rathlin will.”
