Regular readers of ACAP Latest News will know of the plans to eradicate introduced House Mice Mus musculus next year on New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic Antipodes Island, home of seven species of ACAP-listed albatrosses and petrels.

Antipodes Island, with mouse-free Bollins Island beyond, photograph by Erica Sommer

The Million Dollar Mouse project has now reported on the latest development -“Operation Endurance” - in the campaign.

“From February – April 2016 the NZ Defence Force will support the Department of Conservation (DOC) with work in the NZ Subantarctics; this includes work on Campbell Island and the Antipodes Islands.  Two teams will travel on the HMNZS Canterbury to the Subantarctics in February, firstly dropping off a team on Campbell then moving onto the Antipodes Islands.  In addition to the NZ Navy, the NZ Air Force and NZ Army will be on board the HMNZS Canterbury and will provide assistance and support through the use of the Air Force helicopter the Seasprite and Army personnel for coordinating and moving loads from the vessel to the island.  There will be 75 loads in total weighing approximately 27 tonne; loads will be flown by helicopter from the vessel to the island. Loads include a small digger, two power barrows, 15 tonne of timber, and a water tank, a fire escape window for the hut, tools, fuel and food plus the helicopter hangar.

A team of 11 people (DOC staff, contractors and volunteers) will spend 18 days working on the Antipodes Islands in preparation for the mouse eradication start date which is June 2016.  Work will involve levelling a site for the heli-platform, construct the helicopter platform, testing the helicopter hangar on heli-platform, complete hut repairs, and prepare sites for a second helicopter landing site and temporary accommodation shelters.  In addition monitoring staff will undertake mouse monitoring on the unvisited offshore islands and trial mouse monitoring methodology on the main island.” Click here to read more.

Antipodean Albatrosses on Antipodes: at risk to mice?  Photograph by Erica Sommer

The results of the Antipodes exercise will help inform progress towards eradicating mice on the UK’s Gough and South Africa’s Marion, both islands where the species is the only introduced mammal remaining.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 18 November 2105

The US Fish and Wildlife Service seeks volunteers for a six-month tour of duty starting in late March 2016 at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

Ten Vulnerable Hawaiian PetrelPterodroma sandvicensis chicks were flown recently by helicopter from their montane beeding area to a new colony protected by a predator-proof fence at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

In the early morning, two teams were dropped by helicopter onto mountain peaks located in the Hono O Na Pali Natural Area Reserve within the Na Pali-Kona Forest Reserve.  There the teams headed for 10 nest burrows that had been monitored throughout the breeding season.

The chicks were removed, placed into pet carriers, and hiked up to the tops of peaks where the helicopters picked them up.  The chicks were then flown to Princeville Airport where the animal care team on the ground assessed their health.  From there, they were driven to the recently completed predator-proof fence in the Nihoku area of the Refuge.

Surrounded by fine mesh stainless steel fencing, the enclosure at Nihoku protects the birds from predators; the area inside the enclosure has recently been partially restored with native vegetation.  Seabird-friendly nest boxes, specifically designed to mimic natural burrows, have been installed.

One of the 10 translocated Hawaiian Petrel chicks

Hawaiian Petrel chicks in boxes ready for loading

Photographs by Andre Raine

Hawaiian Petrel chicks imprint on their birth colony the first time they emerge from their burrows and see the night sky.  Since the chicks were removed from their natural burrows before this critical imprinting stage, they will imprint on the Nihoku area, returning to the site as adults.  In the meantime, human care-takers will hand-feed the young birds a slurry of fish and squid and carefully monitor their growth until they fledge.

The translocated Hawaiian Petrels chicks have now started to emerge from their burrows and look around at night. They typically do this for two weeks to imprint on their location, and then after that they will leave to sea for the first time.

The above has been adapted from the website of Pacific Rim Conservation.  Read an earlier ACAP Latest News item on the translocation here.

STOP PRESS:  Two of the ten chicks successfully fledged on the night of 13/14 November (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 16 November 2015

Felipe Ceia (Marine and Environmental Research Centre, University of Coimbra, Portugal) and colleagues have published in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry on stable isotope ratios in the blood of tracked  Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Rationale

The main limitation of isotopic tracking for inferring distribution is the lack of detailed reference maps of the isotopic landscape (i.e. isoscapes) in the marine environment.  Here, we attempt to map the marine δ¹³C isoscape for the southwestern sector of the Atlantic Ocean, and assess any temporal variation using the wandering albatross as a model species.

Methods

Tracking data and blood and diet samples were collected monthly from wandering albatrosses rearing chicks at Bird Island, South Georgia, during the austral winter between May and October 2009.  The δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values were measured by mass spectrometry in plasma and blood cells, and related to highly accurate data on individual movements and feeding activity obtained using three types of device: GPS, activity (immersion) loggers and stomach temperature probes.

Results

The tracked birds foraged in waters to the north or northwest of South Georgia, including the Patagonian shelf-break, as far as 2000 km from the colony.  The foraging region encompassed the two main fronts in the Southern Ocean (Polar and Subantarctic fronts).  The δ¹³C values varied by only 2.1 ‰ in plasma and 2.5 ‰ in blood cells, and no relationships were found between the δ¹³C values in plasma and the mean latitude or longitude of landings or feeding events of each individual.

Conclusions

The failure to distinguish a major biogeographic gradient in δ¹³C values suggest that these values in the south Atlantic Ocean are fairly homogeneous.  There was no substantial variation among months in either the δ¹³C or the δ¹⁵N values of plasma or blood cells of tracked birds.  As birds did not show a significant change in diet composition or foraging areas during the study period, these results provide no evidence for major temporal variation in stable isotope ratios in consumer tissues, or in the regional marine isoscape in the austral winter of 2009.”

Wandering Albatross at sea, photograph by John Chardine

Reference:

Ceia, F.R., Ramos, J.A., Phillips, R.A., Cherel, Y., Jones, D.C., Vieira, R.P. & Xavier, J.C. 2015.  Analysis of stable isotope ratios in blood of tracked wandering albatrosses fails to distinguish a δ13C gradient within their winter foraging areas in the southwest Atlantic Ocean.  Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 29: 2328-2336.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 15 November 2015