- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
- Padres pitcher Musgrove needs elbow surgery
- Supreme Court lets stand rules to curb mercury, methane emissions
- Boston beat Denver in NBA exhibition season opener, but Jokic says omens are good
- Chagos diaspora angry at lack of input on islands' fate
- Biden says 'not confident' of peaceful US election
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- Lukaku stars as Napoli beat Como to hold Serie A top spot
- Ohtani set for MLB playoff debut as Dodgers face Padres
- Pogba's drug ban cut to 18 months from four years
- Devine leads New Zealand to big win over India in Women's T20 World Cup
- Bosnia floods kill 16 people
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Prosecutors seek dismissal of rape charges against French rugby players
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- Bolivia's Morales says claims he raped a minor are a 'lie'
- MLB Reds hire two-time champion Francona as manager
- Daniel Maldini receives first Italy call-up for Nations League
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- Ancelotti points finger at Madrid's 'lack of intensity'
- Haiti reeling after 70 killed in gang attack
- Five Czech kids in hospital over TikTok 'piercing challenge'
- What happens next in Iran-Israel conflict?
- Country star Garth Brooks denies rape accusations
- Stubbs hits maiden century as South Africa make 343-4 against Ireland
- DR Congo to begin mpox vaccination campaign Saturday in east
- Odegaard injury has forced Arsenal to be 'different', says Arteta
- Ratcliffe refuses to guarantee Ten Hag's Man Utd future
- Meta must limit data use for targeted ads: EU court
- Mauritius to hold legislative election on November 10
- Britain qualify for America's Cup final after 60-year wait
- IMF asks Sri Lanka to protect hard-won gains
- Morata returns to Spain Nations League squad after injury
- Irish regulator to probe Ryanair use of facial recognition
- Public allowed to see video evidence in France mass rape trial
- US hiring soars past expectations in sign of resilient market
- Under-fire Ten Hag 'together' with Man Utd hierarchy
- Guardiola talks of Man City love affair as financial hearing rumbles on
- De Bruyne out of Belgium Nations League squad
- Japanese trainer Yahagi hopes Shin Emperor achieves 50-year-old Arc dream
- UK's Starmer hails 'landmark' carbon capture funding
- As EU targets Chinese cars, European rivals sputter
- Bosnia floods kill 14 people
- Tennis world number one Swiatek splits with coach Wiktorowski
S.Africa plan to 'bomb' mice that eat albatrosses alive
Conservationists said Saturday that they plan to bomb a remote South African island with tonnes of pesticide-laced pellets to kill mice that are eating albatrosses and other seabirds alive.
Hordes of mice are devouring the eggs of some of the world's most important seabirds that nest on Marion Island, about 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) southeast of Cape Town, and have started eating live birds, leading conservationist Mark Anderson said.
This includes the iconic Wandering Albatross, with a quarter of the world's population nesting on the Indian Ocean island.
"The mice have now, for the first time last year, been found to be feeding on adult Wandering Albatrosses," Anderson told a meeting of BirdLife South Africa, the country's leading bird conservation organisation.
Gruesome images presented at the meeting showed bloodied birds, some with flesh chewed off their heads.
Of the 29 species of seabirds that breed on the island, 19 are threatened with local extinction, the Mouse-Free Marion Project said.
Mouse attacks have escalated in recent years but the birds do not know how to respond because they evolved without terrestrial predators, said Anderson, a leader of the project and CEO of BirdLife South Africa.
"Mice just climb onto them and just slowly eat them until they succumb," he told AFP. It can take days for a bird to die. "We are losing hundreds of thousands of seabirds every year through the mice."
- Extreme conditions -
Billed as one of the world's most important bird conservation efforts, the Mouse-Free Marion Project has raised about a quarter of the $29 million it needs to send a squad of helicopters to drop 600 tonnes of rodenticide-laced pellets onto the rugged island.
It wants to strike in 2027 in winter, when the mice are most hungry and the summer-breeding birds are largely absent.
The pilots will have to fly in extreme conditions and reach every part of the island, which is about 25 kilometres long and 17 kilometres wide.
"We have to get rid of every last mouse," Anderson said. "If there was a male and female remaining, they could breed and eventually get back to where we are now."
The mice are proliferating because warmer temperatures due to climate change means they are breeding more frequently over a longer period, Anderson said. After eating through plants and invertebrates, the mice turned to the birds.
House mice were introduced to the island in the early 1800s. Five cats were brought in around 1948 to control their numbers. But the cat numbers grew to about 2,000 and they were killing about 450,000 birds a year. An eradication project removed the last cat in 1991.
C.Cassis--PC