Rabbit

Invasive species on islands: Macquarie Island, a Unesco world heritage site, was being eaten alive until an ambitious eradication programme restored it.

Antarctic prions and white-headed petrels, which also nest in burrows, had managed to cling on in some sites while pests were on the island. When Shaw talks about the legacy of the eradication she looks to the future. Houghton and Wags were one of several teams sent to scour the island for surviving pests. “I couldn’t even envision what the island was meant to look like,” she says. The orchids and tiny herb that had been protected by fencing have started turning up all over the place. Shaw recently coordinated a 10-year project to assess the island’s response to pest eradication. But Keith Springer, who was leading the Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project, warned her that beyond the beaches the once biodiverse and unique island was so damaged that it was “nothing but a pretty paddock”. “You’d have slime and lichen and landslips where albatrosses were trying to raise chicks and survive.” The last feral cat was shot in 2000, poison drops were used in 2010 to kill the rats and mice, with rabbits also being targeted. Attempts to rid the island of pests had already been under way for some years. She gave up dog handling, became a scientist and completed her PhD as part of the research team monitoring the island’s resurgence. In 2014, Macquarie was declared pest free, the largest island to successfully eliminate rabbits to date.