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According to a recent article in the Journal of Wildlife Management, the eradication of feral goats (Capra hircus) - an invasive and destructive, non-native species - from Santiago Island is now considered complete.  Goats were first introduced to Santiago Island, which sits in the middle of the Galapagos archipelago, during the 1920s.  The goats grazed the island mercilessly, causing erosion, threatening the survival of rare plants and trees and competing with native fauna, such as the giant tortoise.

All 80,000 goats have been culled from the 58,500 hectare island, making this the largest successful eradication of a mammal species from a island ever achieved.  The program began in 2001, with the eradication thought completed in 2005.  The island was then monitored for three years to be sure of success.

Reportedly, removing the first 90% of the goats was easy, but in order to remove the last 10%, the team of conservationists and scientists had to employ a variety of creative techniques like the use of “Judas” goats.  Judas goats were radio-collared, released and tracked as they made their way toward remnant goat herds, allowing team members to locate and eradicate hard-to-find groups of the animals.

The total cost of the eradication and monitoring was $6.1 million, not a small sum, but one that officials say will save management dollars in the long run.  The same group has since cleared the neighboring Isabela Island of goats, which at a whopping 459,000 hectares is even larger than Santiago Island.  That project has yet to be written up for publication, but already native species are beginning to bounce back.

The project is among the most spectacular of a new wave of very ambitious island eradications. “It is incredibly inspiring,” says ecologist Daniel Simberloff of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, who blames “pessimism” for a lack of earlier attempts on this scale. “You have to decide in advance that you are going to stick it out and not get discouraged if the last ones are hard to get,” Simberloff says. “I think there will be a lot more of this.”

Source:  Nature.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Newsletter, Galapagos National Park, Conservation, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.