Anacapa Island thrives after rat eradication
By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times
March 7, 2013, 8:07 p.m.
ANACAPA ISLAND — Just as factories brag about their accident-free days, Channel Islands National Park is showing off this rugged island's rat-free decade.
To get rid of Rattus rattus, officials had a helicopter shower one-square-mile of Anacapa with poisonous green pellets in 2001 and 2002. On Wednesday, they ferried a boatload of reporters and scientists to the square-mile chain of three islets and declared victory.
"The last thing we needed was a project that got only 99.9% of all the island's rats," said Kate Faulkner, a National Park Service biologist.
Faulkner was one of the park officials on hand to demonstrate the island's rebound since the controversial extermination program. A lawsuit from the Fund for Animals called the poison drop "an ecological disaster." It was dismissed. A protester was arrested for allegedly seeding the island with vitamins that he claimed were rat poison antidotes. He was acquitted.
As Faulkner stopped to talk at a spectacular outlook above Cathedral Cove, sea lions basked on the beach far below. The sun was shining, the blooms of the giant yellow coreopsis were blazing, hordes of sea gulls were looking for places to mate and there wasn't a rat in sight. More significantly, the rare birds victimized by rats were, according to biologists, thriving.
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