Giant mice making a meal of seabirds

Last updated at 12:22 25 July 2005


Bird-eating giant mice are threatening to wipe out rare seabirds on a remote British island in the South Atlantic.

House mice on tiny Gough Island have grown to three times the size of those in the UK since they were introduced by the first settlers 200 years ago.

The uninhabited rocky outcrop, one of the Tristan da Cunha group 1,700 miles west of Cape Town, was thought to be a safe haven for some of the world's most endangered seabirds, including petrels, shearwaters and albatrosses.

Taste for chicks

But it appears the mice have developed a taste for their chicks.

The RSPB estimates that they are devouring a million-plus young a year and has been awarded £62,000 by the Government to deal with the problem before it is too late

"Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds and this catastrophe could make many extinct within decades", warned Dr Geoff Hilton, a senior research biologist with the RSPB.

"We think there are about 700,000 mice, which have somehow learned to eat chicks alive - much like blue tits learned to peck milk bottle tops. Albatrosses evolved to nest on Gough because it had no mammal predators - that is why they are so vulnerable."

Of Gough Island's 22 nesting bird species, 20 are seabirds. The main victims are the Tristan albatross and Atlantic petrel. Only 2,000 albatross pairs remain - and they make up 99 per cent of the world population.

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