Anacapa Island Blanketed With Rat Poison
Opponents charge that the project was conducted under false premises, and note the heavy death toll to non-target species and the long term consequences to the ecosystem.
"The American public has entrusted this jewel of an island to the National Park Service," said Scarlet Newton, spokesperson for CHIAPA. "The NPS has violated that trust. Not even a commercial developer on private land would have gotten away with such a wicked scheme."
The poisoning is part of the Anacapa Island Restoration Project, aimed at killing non-native black rats, which the environmental groups say have been established on the islands for two centuries. The NPS says the rats are harming a rare seabird called the Xantus' Murrelet, which nests on Anacapa.
Critics of the project say that published government and scientific documents reveal that the black rat is one of the few species on the island that does not prey upon the murrelet, and that the real threat to this seabird's population is human disturbance. Xantus' Murrelet is also declining on Santa Barbara Island where the black rat is absent, the groups note.
Last December, the NPS poisoned the East Islet of the three that constitute Anacapa, an island located 11 miles off the Southern California coast. The NPS bombarded the island with food pellets laden with the poison brodifacoum, which causes slow death by internal bleeding to all birds and mammals exposed to the pellets.
The death toll last year included at least 12 species of federally protected migratory birds, among them every burrowing owl on the islet.
Also poisoned was one fourth of the world's population of the Anacapa deer mouse, a rare creature found only on Anacapa. The NPS proceeded with the November 1 poisoning despite an emergency petition filed October 29 with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list this unique rodent for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
"The National Park Service has intentionally caused the greatest environmental disaster since the Exxon Valdez, simply because of its religious fervor to kill non-native animals," said Michael Markarian, president of The Fund for Animals.
"Whether animals are native or not, they don't deserve to die slow deaths over three to ten days due to internal bleeding," Markarian added. "This poisoning was both inhumane and ecologically reckless."
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