World’s biggest single eradication operation aims to remove mice from island

Mouse trap: the species was accidentally introduced onto the island by 19th-century seal hunters and has since thrived in the warmer, drier conditions. Photograph: Stefan and Janine Schoombie

Non-native house mice are to be removed from Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean to protect the wandering albatross and other endangered seabirds, in the world’s largest eradication programme of its kind.

Mice accidentally introduced on to the remote island by 19th-century seal hunters have thrived in warmer and drier conditions over the past 30 years, devastating the island’s invertebrates and plants, and then devouring the chicks and even adults of ground- and burrow-nesting seabirds.