Group Drops Suit Over the Poisoning of Anacapa Island Rats

An animal advocacy group has dropped a lawsuit against the National Park Service in exchange for the opportunity to independently observe the eradication of Anacapa Island’s black rat population.

The New York-based Fund for Animals was seeking to appeal a federal district judge’s decision last year that allowed the park service to disperse poisoned grain pellets on the East Anacapa islet in the first phase of an eradication program.

Park service officials maintain that the eradication of black rats from the three islets that make up Anacapa Island is necessary to save the rare Xantus’ murrelet from extinction. The black rats prey upon the bird’s eggs and chicks, said Kate Faulkner, chief of natural resources management for Channel Islands National Park.

The advocacy group, joined in the lawsuit by the Channel Islands Animal Protection Assn., contends the rats do not pose a threat to the birds, and poisoning them also indiscriminately kills other species of animals and birds.

Announcing its agreement with the park service last week, the advocacy group said it was victorious in shedding light on a program with no oversight.

“One of our complaints with Phase 1 is that there was no independent monitoring of what was happening,” said Michael Markarian, executive vice president of the Fund for Animals. “By having independent review of what is happening to dead and dying animals, there is more accountability and transparency in this project.”

Along with killing off black rats, the first phase of the eradication effort killed nearly 50 birds from 11 different species, Faulkner said. Markarian’s group argues that the number was probably far greater, therefore the need for independent review during Phase 2 of the project.

Markarian said the agreement also will force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a new environmental assessment before proceeding with the second and final phase of the $700,000 eradication program. But Faulkner said a second assessment would have been completed regardless of the lawsuit.

“There was no roadblock to us moving ahead even without the settlement,” Faulkner said. “There is just a lot of work involved when you’ve got a court action.”

Faulkner said Phase 2 will proceed in November or December, depending on weather conditions. Anacapa’s middle and west islets will be showered with bait by helicopter and by hand along the shoreline. Efforts to eradicate the black rat population from the East Anacapa islet were successful, Faulkner said.

“We can now look at what has been the biological response,” she said. “Do we have the scene of death and destruction that the plaintiffs alleged or not? We do not.”

Faulkner said the black rat eradication on East Anacapa also served to preserve populations of certain reptiles and amphibians. Twice as many side-blotched lizards and Channel Islands slender salamanders were observed during a springtime population count on East Anacapa compared to populations observed on Middle Anacapa, Faulkner said.

“In prior years, [the counts] were very similar,” she said. “The difference is, we removed rats.”

The rat eradication is part of an ongoing program at Channel Islands National Park to return native flora and fauna to the islands, but the methodology has drawn the ire of a variety of environmental groups.

“As human beings, I think we may try to interfere too much to return ecosystems to look aesthetically pleasing to us,” Markarian said. “Humans are certainly the most nonnative species that you could have added, and we’re not getting rid of ourselves. We’re just saying, ‘Let’s just have a little more perspective.’ ”