Remove Eggs Remove Killing Remove Rats Remove Species
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Shearwater Success: Seabirds Return to Rat-Free Islands

10,000 Birds

After invasive rats had effectively extirpated Manx Shearwaters from two of the Isles of Scilly—British islands off the southwestern coast of Cornwall—Prince Charles and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) sprang into action. Score one for the good guys. None had been seen in St. Agnes or Gugh for generations.

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Angry Birds, What’s Black and White and Hungry All Over, and a Little Something for the Ladies: This Week in Bird News

10,000 Birds

Scientists ponder the feasibility of genetically engineering chickens to lay the eggs of endangered bird species. The law of unintended consequences has tragic effects at a zoo in England, as rat poison ends up killing the Rainbow Lorikeets it was intended to protect. So crazy it just might work?

Penguins 100
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Rare Birds: The Extraordinary Tale of the Bermuda Petrel and the Man Who Brought It Back from Extinction–A Review

10,000 Birds

The story of the cahow, a “Lazurus species” that was thought to be extinct for over 300 years and then discovered to be breeding on a tiny remote island in Bermuda, is part of modern birding legend. A particularly good type of fertilizer, for example, drastically increased the population of crabs, spoiling Bermuda’s golf courses.

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The Gap Between Wildlife and the Animal Rights Movement

10,000 Birds

What’s even more frustrating is when animal rights people learn of plans to cull nonnative species. Navy wiped out every single rat on Midway Atoll, seabirds flourished afterwards. The number of bird lives saved as a result of the rat removal operation can easily be estimated to be into the millions by now.

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When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

Wildlife conservation is concerned with protecting wildlife at the level of species or perhaps population. With the exception of species that number in the hundreds, conservation biologists are not as concerned with the fates of individual animals, it is only when such fates of many individuals are added up do they begin to worry.

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Come@Me: Don’t Mourn for Extinct Birds

10,000 Birds

Basically, this species is so dimwitted, it doesn’t know how to survive. Because, Pink Pigeons are not capable of doing the tasks required to create and bring up children of the species. These endangered birds have trouble producing a fertilized egg and, even worse, they don’t even know how to build a nest so the egg survives?

Mauritius 102
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Searching for vultures in India

10,000 Birds

Yet, in 1990s India has killed more than 99% of its Gyps vultures (e.g. The disappearance of vultures has allowed other species such as rat and [stray] dog populations to grow. A vulture’s metabolism is a true “dead-end” for pathogens, but dogs and rats become carriers of the pathogens. Not for the same reason, although.

India 140