The first step? Getting rid of the rats that infest it.
Illustrations by JILLIAN TAMAKI Even though biologist Gregg
Howald grew up in the Pacific Northwest, he says that every
visit to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands feels like a homecoming. “The
diversity of wildlife is incredible. It’s everything -- from
[the] whales to the seabirds to the abundance of fisheries,”
Howald, one of the world’s foremost ecotoxicologists, says.
“Landing on an island with an active seabird colony is amazing.
The birds almost darken the sky; there are clouds of them flying
by. The sheer vastness of numbers … it’s a real treat.” Landing
on Alaska’s aptly named Rat Island, though, is completely
different, Howald says. It’s eerily silent, stripped of plants
and riddled with burrows. “The rats have just wiped out the
seabirds,” he tells me. The Island Conservation organization
estimates that rats are responsible for 40 to 60 percent of all
bird and reptile extinctions on most islands. Land predators --
rats, snakes, foxes, and even cats, fo