Trouble in paradise

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The atoll of Tetiaro is a string of tiny islands in French Polynesia, about 60km away from Tahiti. The islands – known as ‘motus’ to local Polynesians – are unique ecosystems that are crucial nesting sites for native seabirds. But invasive species threaten to disrupt these fragile environments – a fate seen across many islands in the Pacific. Rats arrived with early human settlers and have driven bird species off some of the islands. Meanwhile introduced mosquitoes have thrived in the warm conditions, and now act as vectors for diseases such as the Zika virus. Rat eradication experts have travelled to one of the uninhabited islands in the atoll, called Reiono, to attempt an experimental eradication of thousands of rats with one mammoth poison bait drop. They’re also using this as an opportunity to better understand why eradication attempts have been less effective on tropical islands. At the same time, on another island in the chain called Onetahi, researchers are releasing swarms of sterilised male mosquitoes to try to rid this motu of the disease-carrying pest. Join Carl Smith from ABC Australia for the third episode of The Chase: a special four-part series about science on the run. Picture: The Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) is smaller than many other invasive rat species, but it’s still been linked to localised extinctions of island birds, Credit: Carl Smith

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes,
0:24.0	you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:28.0	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. Boats about to get going to Rayono, Rat Island.
0:47.0	I'm Carl Smith from the ABC in Australia and in this edition of The Chase for Discovery on the BBC.
0:55.9	I'm on a small boat jetting across a clear lagoon in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
1:02.1	I'm following two international teams. in the My first destination, the uninhabited island of Rayono, is about 60 kilometers off Tahiti and it's home to giant blue land crabs and nesting seabirds.
1:22.0	But now invasive rats threaten to drive the native
1:26.8	birds out of this fragile ecosystem.
1:32.0	Wow. Okay so I've just gotten off the boat here at Rayona. It's a very brief sandy shore and then a thick dense wall of vegetation.
1:45.0	You can see and hear bird life all around you.
1:49.0	It really is a tropical paradise and it feels untouched, although I know that here rats are
1:57.8	causing some massive problems. Which is why I'm traveling with volunteers and hundreds of kilograms of rat poison.
2:09.0	It is all or nothing really because it takes actually one pregnant female to ruin all the
2:16.8	planning that is just really several years.
	...

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