Book review

Rat Island: Predators in paradise and the world’s greatest wildlife rescue

By William Stolzenburg

Bloomsbury: 2011

ISBN 978 1 4088 2511 2

William Stolzenburg is an American journalist who writes a lot about animals, but for the past decade, his focus has settled on that particular class of creature called predators. Rat Island is one of three that he has recently published. The other two are: Where the Wild Things Were and Heart of a Lion.

Rat Island focuses on three main island groups; the Aleutians in the Bering Sea, (the group that run south west from Alaska), Clipperton Island which lies one thousand three hundred kilometres off the coast of Mexico and the New Zealand group.

He covers each group with a detailed back history that sets the scene for the full-on attack to eradicate the introduced predators. This is followed up with a description of the recovery of the particular ecosystem or indigenous species that was being targeted.

A large part of the book is focused on New Zealand. The work attempted in Fiordland in the 1880’s by Richard Henry, an early pioneer in pest management, and in the 1960s when Don Merton became actively involved as a junior in the Wild Life Service, all set the scene for the battle to recover Islands that were being decimated by pests. One of the big breakthroughs was the discovery of the single feed bait Brodifacom for the eradication of rats, which are the major pest and the most difficult to eradicate. This replaced warfarin that required high doses delivered over several feeds.

The work done in New Zealand influenced how island sanctuaries around the world managed their eradication programmes. Not all went smoothly. Each island had their unique features that had to be taken into account. There were cases of unexpected collateral damage to manage. Bureaucrats caused frustration then, as they do now. Islands close to urban areas had ill-informed protesters to deal with, but despite this, all had a successful ecological outcome.

The early chapters on the history of the ecological effect of human occupation on Aotearoa, which started seven centuries ago, should I feel, be included in the New Zealand high school history curriculum. We should all understand the ecological damage we have done in the past so that we can better manage the future.

This book is very well written and a really good read. Does it give you hope? I am not sure. Read it and see what you think.