The art of the impossible

The extermination of every single one of South Georgia’s rats, for the sake of its birds, was confirmed at a press conference in London last week. A summer of searching with dogs and bait two years after the last poison was deployed turned up no sign of a rodent. This achievement is remarkable, not least because it was deemed impossible right up until it was achieved. It was a barmy idea, way out there, crazy, bound to fail. Like lots of other ideas. Maybe there’s a lesson here.

The island got infested with rats from whaling ships centuries ago, and they soon exterminated endemic pintails and pipits from the main island, driving the remnant populations of prions and petrels into the rat-free mountains. Only the penguins were rat proof. (It is a little known international law, deriving from an Antarctic treaty, that birds’ names down there must begin with ‘p’.)

Then, New Zealanders and Australians worked out how to use new poison baits slung out of helicopters to wipe out rats on two subantarctic islands, Campbell and Macquarie.