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Rat Island rises from the icy gray
waters of the Bering Sea, a
mass of volcanic rock
covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and
Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks
of seabirds, the
island gained a new name when
shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the
nesting
birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of
other
remote islands around the world, a massive -
and massively
controversial - wildlife rescue
mission is under way.
Islands,
making up just 3
percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of
its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems,
home to unique species
that evolved in peaceful
isolation, have been catastrophically
disrupted by
mainland predators: rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried
by
humans to islands around the globe. To save these
endangered islanders,
academic ecologists have
teamed up with professional hunters and
semiretired
poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on
annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping
at goat herds from
helicopters. Biological SWAT
teams are blanketing mountainous isles with
rat
poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and
much-debated side of today's conservation movement,
founded on a cruel-to-be-kind
philosophy.
Touring
exotic locales with a ragtag
group of environmental fighters, William
Stolzenburg
delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits
of
human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid
manifold threats to life on
Earth, he reveals a new
reason to hope.
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