Skip to main content

Search the SPREP Catalogue

Refine Search Results

Tags / Keywords

Language

Available Online

Tags / Keywords

Available Online

28 result(s) found.

Sort by

You searched for

  • Tags / Keywords felis catus
    X
  • Tags / Keywords geographic nesting
    X
Destination Revealed: Post-Nesting Migrations of Hawksbill Turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) from Moso Island, Republic of Vanuatu.
Island and Ocean Ecosystems
Available Online

Balazs, George H.

,

Hickey, Francis R.

,

Jim, Laura M. R

,

Rice, Marc R.

2022
Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) nesting populations and behaviors in the Republic of Vanuatu are poorly understood. In an effort to evaluate their internesting home range, post-nesting migration and foraging habitat home ranges, 7 post-nesting hawksbill turtles were satellite tagged at Moso Island, Republic of Vanuatu between January 2018 and January 2020. The mean internesting home ranges of two turtles was 0.8 km2 proximal to their nesting beach indicating possible value in establishing a marine protected area along the north coast of Moso Island during the nesting season. The Great Barrier Reef, Australia and New Caledonia were the two major post-nesting destinations. Hawksbill turtles are legally protected by law in both countries. Foraging home ranges for 4 hawksbill turtles in New Caledonia and Aneityum Island, Vanuatu ranged from 1.7 to 28.9 km2. It will be important to continue this study to better determine the total area of habitat utilization of the internesting hawksbills at Moso Island in order to facilitate the implementation of community-based conservation measures and to illuminate home range location and size.
Predation pressures on sooty terns by cats, rats and common mynas on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic
Island and Ocean Ecosystems, BRB
Available Online

Dickey, R.C.

,

Hughes, B.J.

,

Reynolds, S.J.

2019
Despite the presence of invasive black rats (Rattus rattus), common mynas (Acridotheres tristis), and feral domestic cats (Felis catus), sooty terns (Onychoprion fuscatus) breed in large numbers on Ascension Island in the tropical South Atlantic Ocean. These introduced predators impact the terns by destroying eggs or interrupting incubation (mynas), eating eggs (mynas and rats), eating chicks (rats and cats), or eating adults (cats). Between 1990 and 2015, 26 censuses of sooty terns and five of mynas were completed and myna predation was monitored on 10 occasions. Rat relative abundance indices were determined through trapping around the tern colonies and rat predation was monitored by counting chick carcasses. Cat predation was quantified by recording freshly killed terns. Prior to their eradication in 2003, cats had the greatest impact on sooty terns and were depredating 5,800 adults and 3,600 near-fledging chicks (equivalent to the loss of 71,000 eggs) each breeding season. We estimated that 26,000 sooty tern eggs (13% of all those laid) were depredated by approximately 1,000 mynas. Rats were not known to depredate sooty terns prior to cat eradication but in 2005, 131 of 596 ringed (monitored) chicks (22%) were depredated by rats. In 2009 chick carcass density was 0.16 per m2. Predation by rats hugely increased in the absence of cats and was the equivalent of 69,000 eggs. Care is needed when applying our findings to seabirds globally. The scarcity of alternative food sources and seasonally high density of easily available prey in the sooty tern colony may have magnified predation by cats, rats and mynas.
South Africa works towards eradicating introduced house mice from sub-Antarctic Marion Island: the largest island yet attempted for mice
Island and Ocean Ecosystems, BRB
Available Online

Beaumont, J.

,

Chauke, L.F.

,

Chown, S. L.

,

Cooper, J.

,

Devanunthan, N.

,

Dilley, B.J.

,

Dopolo, M.

,

Fikizolo, L.

,

Heine, J.

,

Henderson, S.

,

Jacobs, C.A.

,

Johnson, F.

,

Kelly, J.

,

Makhado, A.B.

,

Marais, C.

,

Maroga, J.

,

Mayekiso, M.

,

McClelland, G.

,

Mphepya, J.

,

Muir, D.N. Ngcaba, N. Ngcobo, J.P. Parkes, F. Paulsen, S. Schoombie, K. Springer, C. Stringer,H. Valentine, R.M. Wanless and P.G. Ryan

,

Preston, G.R.

2019
House mice (Mus musculus) were introduced to South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island, the larger of the two Prince Edward Islands, by sealers in the early 19th century. Over the last two centuries they have greatly reduced the abundance of native invertebrates. Domestic cats (Felis catus) taken to the island in 1948 to control mice at the South African weather station soon turned feral, killing large numbers of breeding seabirds. An eradication programme finally removed cats from the island by 1991, in what is still the largest island area cleared of cats at 290 km2. Removal of the cats, coupled with the warmer and drier climate on the island over the last half century, has seen increasing densities of mice accumulating each summer. As resources run out in late summer, the mice seek alternative food sources. Marion is home to globally important seabird populations and since the early 2000s mice have resorted to attacking seabird chicks. Since 2015 c. 5% of summer-breeding albatross fledglings have been killed each year, as well as some winter-breeding petrel and albatross chicks. As a Special Nature Reserve, the Prince Edward Islands are afforded the highest degree of protection under South African environmental legislation. A recent feasibility plan suggests that mice can be eradicated using aerial baiting. The South African Department of Environmental Affairs is planning to mount an eradication attempt in the winter of 2021, following a partnership with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to eradicate mice on Gough Island in the winter of 2020. The eradication programme on Marion Island will be spearheaded by the South African Working for Water programme – Africa’s biggest conservation programme focusing on the control of invasive species –which is already driving eradication projects against nine other invasive species on Marion Island.
Archipelago-wide island restoration in the Galapagos Islands: Reducing costs of invaisve mammal eradication programs and reinvasion risk
BRB
Available Online

Campbell, Karl J.

,

Carrion, Victor

,

Cruz, Felipe

,

Donian, C. Josh

,

Lavoie, Christian

2011
Invasive alien mammals are the major driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation on islands. Over the past three decades, invasive mammal eradication from islands has become one of society's most powerful tools for preventing extinction of insular endemics and restoring insular ecosystems. As practitioners tackle larger islands for restoration, three factors will heavily influence success and outcomes: the degree of local support, the ability to mitigate for non-target impacts, and the ability to eradicate non-native species more cost-effectively. Investments in removing invasive species, however, must be weighed against the risk of reintroduction. One way to reduce reintroduction risks is to eradicate the target invasive species from an entire archipelago, and thus eliminate readily available sources. We illustrate the costs and benefits of this approach with the efforts to remove invasive goats from the Galápagos Islands. Project Isabela, the world's largest island restoration effort to date, removed > 140,000 goats from > 500,000 ha for a cost of US$10.5 million. Leveraging the capacity built during Project Isabela, and given that goat reintroductions have been common over the past decade, we implemented an archipelago-wide goat eradication strategy. Feral goats remain on three islands in the archipelago, and removal efforts are underway. Efforts on the Galápagos Islands demonstrate that for some species, island size is no longer the limiting factor with respect to eradication. Rather, bureaucratic processes, financing, political will, and stakeholder approval appear to be the new challenges. Eradication efforts have delivered a suite of biodiversity benefits that are in the process of revealing themselves. The costs of rectifying intentional reintroductions are high in terms of financial and human resources. Reducing the archipelago-wide goat density to low levels is a technical approach to reducing reintroduction risk in the short-term, and is being complemented with a longer-term social approach focused on education and governance.
Estimating burdens of neglected tropical zoonotic diseases on islands with introduced mammals
BRB
Available Online

Croll, Donald A.

,

Holmes, Nick D.

,

Kilpatrick, A. Marm.

,

Newton, Kelly M.

,

Spatz, Dena R.

,

Tershy, Bernie.

,

de Wit, Luz A.

2017
Many neglected tropical zoonotic pathogens are maintained by introduced mammals, and on islands the most common introduced species are rodents, cats, and dogs. Management of introduced mammals, including control or eradication of feral populations, which is frequently done for ecological restoration, could also reduce or eliminate the pathogens these animals carry. Understanding the burden of these zoonotic diseases is crucial for quantifying the potential public health benefits of introduced mammal management. However, epidemiological data are only available from a small subset of islands where these introduced mammals co-occur with people. We examined socioeconomic and climatic variables as predictors for disease burdens of angiostrongyliasis, leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, toxocariasis, and rabies from 57 islands or island countries. We found strong correlates of disease burden for leptospirosis, Toxoplasma gondii infection, angiostrongyliasis, and toxocariasis with more than 50% of the variance explained, and an average of 57% (range = 32–95%) predictive accuracy on out-of-sample data. We used these relationships to provide estimates of leptospirosis incidence and T. gondii seroprevalence infection on islands where nonnative rodents and cats are present. These predicted estimates of disease burden could be used in an initial assessment of whether the costs of managing introduced mammal reservoirs might be less than the costs of perpetual treatment of these diseases on islands.