Rats !

Thered be rats in them hills !

And rats there are, Xplore and the rat attack team have returned to Pitcairn after a successful expedition to Henderson Island, but there is a bitter sweet taste in everyone's mouths.

The key objective was to find out for sure if rats had survived the eradication project of 2011, or if there were rats there, if they were of a different type than what was at first being eradicated, meaning, had there been a different type introduced by an out side source since the eradication project.

The findings were quite definite, the original rats had survived 2011, there were no signs of any other species of rats, the numbers of rats at this stage are very small, but they are there in numbers, and rats breed very very fast, a new generation every 6 weeks.

One of the positives to this trip was that the special and endemic bird population is breeding well and coming back in good numbers.

One of the negatives to the trip is the fact that another rat baiting project cant be redone until the population reaches a stabilized, plateaued level, and that will take about 2 to 3 years to reach that point.
So, Xplore is now on-route back to French Polynesia