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Dramatic increase in the Zembretta Yelkouan shearwater breeding population following ship rat eradication spurs interest in managing a 1500-year old invasion

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Abstract

The ship rat (Rattus rattus) was introduced 1,500 years ago to the Zembra Archipelago (Tunisia) and was eradicated in October–November 2009 on two of its islands, Zembretta and Zembrettina. This eradication was performed 2 years after the discovery of a small colony of Yelkouan shearwaters (Puffinus yelkouan), a species recently up-listed to the vulnerable IUCN extinction risk category. For 2 years before and 3 years after rat eradication, the Zembretta Yelkouan shearwater breeding colony was checked yearly at the end of the breeding season. The number of recorded breeding pairs reaching 176 and 145, respectively, increases of 10.4 and 8.5-fold two and 3 years after rat eradication. This experiment shows that eradication of an ancient introduced ship rat population has dramatically improved the Zembretta Yelkouan shearwater breeding population very quickly. This result suggests that managing even long-introduced populations might well be fruitful.

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Acknowledgments

Funds and support were provided by the Conservatoire du Littoral through the PIM Initiative (Petites Îles de Méditerranée) and by the Tunisian agency APAL (Agence de Protection et d’Aménagement du Littoral). We are very grateful to the Director of the APAL and the Tunisian Army for granting permission and providing support to conduct this research. We thank particularly Sami Ben Haj for being the link between French and Tunisian actors of this project and all those of the ASPEN (Association de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine Environnemental et Naturel tunisien), CEN PACA (Conservatoire des Espaces Naturels Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur), Conservatoire du Littoral and IMEP (Institut Méditerranéen d’Ecologie et de Paléoécologie), who helped us during eradication and field work, especially Patrick Vidal, Louis Dutouquet, Patrick Hamon, Jean-Patrick Durand, Saleh Amar, Abdelkader Lalaoui, Hamza Belkahla, Beyrem Milady, Mohammed Ali Ben Dhafer, Rachid El Bach, Wahbi Jaouadi, Mounir, Abdallah Ben Dhafer, Lise Ruffino, Giovanna Spano and Massimo Putzu. Warm thanks to Pierre Yésou and Éric Vidal who commented the first drafts of this publication and made several useful and pertinent suggestions, and to the two referees who contributed in depth to clarify reasoning.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. A dos d’îles, Association for the Study and Conservation of Insular Biodiversity, 101 Val de Sibourg, 13 680, Lançon de Provence, France

    Karen Bourgeois & Sylvain Dromzée

  2. Laboratoire d’écologie animale, Département de Biologie, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, Campus Universitaire, El Manar I, CP 2092, Tunis, Tunisia

    Ridha Ouni & Awatef Abiadh

  3. INRA, UMR 0985, Station SCRIBE, Campus de Beaulieu, 35 042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Michel Pascal & Damien Fourcy

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  1. Karen Bourgeois
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  2. Ridha Ouni
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  3. Michel Pascal
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  4. Sylvain Dromzée
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  6. Awatef Abiadh
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Correspondence to Karen Bourgeois.

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Bourgeois, K., Ouni, R., Pascal, M. et al. Dramatic increase in the Zembretta Yelkouan shearwater breeding population following ship rat eradication spurs interest in managing a 1500-year old invasion. Biol Invasions 15, 475–482 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-013-0419-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-013-0419-x

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