The World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island has been declared free of pests after a near seven-year campaign to eradicate it of rats, rabbits and mice.
Macquarie Island lies 1,500 kilometres south-east of Tasmania in the sub-Antarctic.
In 2007, the Australian and Tasmanian governments jointly funded a $25 million project to eradicate pests from the 13,000-hectare island.
A baiting program was undertaken, before hunters and their dogs were brought in to eradicate any surviving animals.
A monitoring program since then has not detected any pests for the past two years and the eradication program has been declared a success.
The project manager, Keith Springer, says the monitoring process has been intensive.
“We’ve had teams that have scoured the island by day and by night, covering a total of 92,000 on the island, in terms of their tracked travel, searching every nook and cranny that they could access, to make sure that there’s none left, no rabbit and no rodent,” he said.
