"Rat Island" got its name from a growing rodent population that has taken over the small piece of land ever since the rodents hitched a ride on a cargo ship in the late 1700s, but now the island has a new name.
The rats have been eating resident bird eggs, and even the birds themselves, rendering the North Pacific island a "bird song-free zone," but recently the birds have been making a fighting comeback, Discovery News reported.
"When I first landed on what was Rat Island in 2007, it was an eerily silent place. A typical Aleutian island is teeming with wildlife, swirling with noisy, pungent birds. Not this place. It was crisscrossed with rat trails, littered with rat scat, scavenged bird bones, it even smelled...wrong," Stacey Buckelew, an Island Conservation biologist said in an Island Conservation news release.
A team of environmentalists wiped out the rats with poison in 2008, since then one can hear an increasing chorus of bird songs around the island. The island has been renamed Hawadax Island, which was its traditional Unangan (Aleut) name.
"The island is hardly recognizable among the cacophony of birds calling everywhere; it's alive with bird fledglings-teals, eiders, wrens, sparrows, eagles, peregrine falcons, gulls, sandpipers. The island is transforming," Buckelew said.
For the first time in history conservationists have observed tufted puffins nesting on Hadawx Island, and Leach's storm-petrels and fork-tailed storm-petrels have made a long-awaited return.
The number of ground nesting birds has been rapidly increasing as well. In 2008 a survey counted nine glaucous-winged gull nests on the island, as of this summer there were 28.
"The return of bird life to Hawadax Island is an inspiring example of what we can accomplish when we work together to fix a longstanding problem. It's a win for people, and it's a win for nature," Randy Hagenstein, Alaska state director for The Nature Conservancy, said.
The rats' eradication could also benefit plant-life, as the returning bird species help to fertilize the soil.
"What a joy it was to visit Hawadax Island this summer,"Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Manager Steve Delehanty, said. "There were birds everywhere. There is no more valuable action we can take on a National Wildlife Refuge than making it once again a haven for wildlife."
