The rat-occupied islands of Attu and Kiska will now become a different kind of battleground.
Once the site of World War II fighting between Japanese and U.S. forces, the two remote parts of the vast Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge are being targeted by a Fish and Wildlife Service campaign to eradicate the islands’ bird-devouring Norway rats.
“It’s very exciting that Norway rats, a highly destructive, invasive predator, may soon be gone from these wonderful ocean islands,” Ian Jones, a professor of biology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, said in an interview Thursday.
Now in its early planning stages, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s rat eradication campaign is targeting a total of four islands located hundreds of miles apart in the long Aleutian chain. Amchitka, Attu, Great Sitkin and Kiska islands each have been overrun by the rats that prey upon myriad native species. The plan will likely rely on rat poison.
