- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury US (May 24 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1608191036
- ISBN-13: 978-1608191031
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.9 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#207,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #31 in Books > Outdoors & Nature > Conservation > Wildlife
- #35 in Books > Outdoors & Nature > Conservation > Endangered Species
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“Stolzenburg offers a fascinating, if occasionally grisly, peek into the emerging science of preservation through eradication.” —Salon
“Gripping… Rat Island is less a tragedy of paradise lost than an uplifting tale about the heroic struggle to regain indigenous habitats by exterminating the unwanted predators…[A] powerful book.” —Financial Times
"[Stolzenburg] offers a solid historical background on the topic and effectively conveys the complicated nature of balancing a disrupted island ecosystem." —Library Journal
"An extraordianry story" —Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A gripping account." —80 beats (Discover magazine’s blog)
Book Description
Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive-and massively controversial-wildlife rescue mission is under way.
Islands, making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically disrupted by mainland predators-rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders, academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping at goat herds from helicopters. Biological SWAT teams are blanketing mountainous isles with rat poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and much-debated side of today's conservation movement, founded on a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy.
Touring exotic locales with a ragtag group of environmental fighters, William Stolzenburg delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits of human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid manifold threats to life on Earth, he reveals a new reason to hope.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fighting the good fight,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Rat Island (Hardcover)
This is a fascinating book about the dramatic effect of invasive species on native fauna. In particular, it focuses primarily on the effects of rats on island populations of birds. When birds evolve in habitats without rats or other mammalian ground carnivores, they become extremely susceptible to rats. Surprisingly (to me), rats are quite vicious and efficient predators. I thought that was a capacity they had, but were primarily scavengers. Not on new islands they aren't!The book details the efforts of conservationists who grasp this truth and try to find a way of protecting endangered birds from invading hordes of rats. Ultimately, they realize that there is only one promising solution. Kill the rats/invaders. And in the last few decades, this has become possible. Islands in New Zealand and Alaska are featured in this book as conservationists turn into cold-blooded killers. That is part of the controversy, as are the inadvertent deaths of other species that feed on the poison rats. However, both forms of death are temporary. Bald eagles aren't being driven to extinction by eating a few dead rats on a few islands for one summer. And the idea that common rats are in danger of extinction is just silly. Unfortunately, it isn't silly or unrealistic to suggest that their prey (i.e., island ground-nesting birds) are in such danger. It's not a perfect solution, but the alternative to killing lots of rats and a few "bystanders" is the loss of many species. This doesn't appear to be a new phenomenon. Supposedly, the humans who colonized the Pacific islands brought rats with them as good luck and an adaptable source of meat. That worked too well in too many cases. Indeed, the book (citing a research paper on the topic) suggests that the collapse of Easter Island's ecology may have been due to introduced rats eating all the seeds of the dominant tree species. So this is a book about contradictions. Killing animals to save animals. Sadly, life is shades of grey, not black and white, so this has become necessary in some cases. I've read other books about invasive species where they suggest that invasives are most problematic when the environment has changed so that the native species is no longer as well-suited to it as they were. That opens the door for the invader, who can then outcompete the native in the new, compromised environment. This book clearly doesn't support that for many cases of rats invading islands. They are predators attacking prey who have not evolved any kind of a defense mechanism, and who are unable to respond quickly enough. So while the idea of shooting, trapping, and poisoning some rats, cats, and ferrets may seem offensive to some (it does to me), the alternative, permanently losing dozens of species, seems far worse. Overall, the book is well written and easy to read. This isn't a completely happy book, but it does offer the inspiring and much-needed message that humans can, if they are willing to really try, make the planet a better home for more species. And that's a message I can really buy into.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews) 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tale of loss and (conditional) triumph,
By David Goodwin - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Rat Island (Hardcover)
"Rat Island" is a story of invasive species and the effort (sometimes belated and sometimes too late) to reverse the trend of decimation of native flora and fauna. From the moment human exploration and colonization became a reality, humans brought with them rats, cats, pigs, goats, and other creatures, whose introduction into new lands would often greatly upset whatever balance had previously reigned. Especially vulnerable to this type of invasion were islands whose isolation had hitherto allowed for all manner of eco-diversity, and whose populations--often evolving in the absence of predatory land-mammals--would become easy prey for the invasive hordes. Central to "Rat Island" is the story of the Kakapo, a peculiar, flightless parrot native to the New Zealand area, whose precipitous decline--and astonishing recovery--form the central emotional narrative of the book."Rat Island" is a fantastic read, treating the above with the sort of storytelling acumen it deserves. It is careful, too, to balance the surprise triumph won by recent reclamation campaigns with the obvious downsides and collateral casualties of the mass-poisoning campaigns needed to remove every last trace of rodentia from some of the hardest-hit islands, although I can see some finding its treatment to still be too one-sided. Written in a lively, captivating style, "Rat Island" is the best book of its sort I have encountered, putting its central challenge in stark perspective while detailing how--with a great deal of coordinated effort--trends wrought by careless expansion can be reversed. 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spellbinding tale of predation,
By F. Kooyman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Rat Island (Hardcover)
A fascinating and horrifying book about native birds in Alaska and New Zealand that are endangered by introduced rats and other predators. This story of the attempts to eradicate these predators reads like a crime novel.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue,
By Stacy Carroll "f1lmrtr" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Rat Island (Hardcover)
An intelligent, must-read... Will Stolzenburg's well-researched account details the gut-wrenching efforts necessary to restore the environment and preserve wildlife... An engrossing labor of love... Sure to enlighten the masses and encourage conversations about conservation...
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