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On Marion Island, south of South Africa, scientists have made preparations to contain a major mouse plague. “The mice feed on both adult and newborn endangered seabirds,” damaging the ecosystem, South Africa’s National Biodiversity Institute said in its annual report released on Friday.
Source: BELGA
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Environmental organization Birdlife South Africa and the South African Environment Department together raised 450 million rand (about $24 million) to eradicate the rodents next year, the Biodiversity Institute said. If no action is taken, 19 of 28 local seabird species are at risk of extinction within the next 30 years, the South African Environment Department and Birdlife say.
House mice first arrived on the island in the nineteenth century, most likely when seal hunters settled there. But today they are having a “devastating impact on the island’s ecology,” says Birdlife. Due to the increasingly warmer climate, their numbers have increased rapidly over the past thirty years. This caused a shortage of invertebrates, causing the mice to switch to birds.
Mouse poison will be spread over 30,000 hectares using helicopters.