Britain Spent 10 Years Clearing Rats From One Island — Then Sent In 3 Dogs to Check

Britain spent a decade and $13 million removing every rat from a subantarctic island — and then had to prove it worked with three terriers. South Georgia sits 1,500 km east of the Falklands, with no permanent population and one of the greatest seabird concentrations on Earth. Rats arrived on sealing and whaling ships two centuries ago and ate their way through millions of eggs and chicks a year. In 2011, a small charity from Dundee, Scotland began the largest rodent eradication ever attempted — three helicopters, 300 tonnes of bait, an island eight times bigger than the previous record. In this video you'll find out why the project was only possible because of the glaciers, why that same ice gave it a deadline set by climate change, why 6,600 reindeer were shot as part of the same decade of work, and why the whole thing came down to whether three dogs named Wai, Will and Ahu could smell anything over six months of walking. It's a conservation success story, and the cost of it is much larger than anyone puts in the headline. Topics: South Georgia, rat eradication, invasive species, seabirds, South Georgia pipit, pintail, detection dogs, conservation, subantarctic, reindeer cull, biosecurity, island restoration #SouthGeorgia #Conservation #Rats #Wildlife #Islands #Seabirds