GECI Island Restoration Programme — Invasive Mammal Eradication (Mexico)

Grupo de Ecologia y Conservacion de Islas (GECI), a Mexican NGO founded in 1998 and based in Ensenada, Baja California, works with Mexico's National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) and the global Island Conservation network to remove invasive mammals from Pacific and Gulf of California islands, most of which sit within federally protected areas.

Over more than two decades, GECI-led operations have eradicated 60 populations of 13 invasive mammal species — including rats, cats, mice, goats, rabbits, dogs and donkeys — from 39 priority islands. On Guadalupe Island, removal of feral goats (completed around 2007) was followed by a native-plant nursery programme that has planted more than a quarter of a million seedlings, tripling the island's forest cover to over 900 hectares.

A 2022 peer-reviewed study tracking 61 breeding colonies of 19 seabird species over more than 20 years found that 23 of 27 (85%) seabird colonies historically extirpated from the Baja California Pacific Islands have returned, with 12 entirely new colonies recorded and 31 of 61 monitored populations showing significant increases. Islands in the programme now support an estimated 400,000-1,400,000 breeding seabirds annually and safeguard more than 147 endemic terrestrial species.

Gains depend on continuous biosecurity — quarantine protocols and rodent-detection networks — to prevent re-invasion, and the long-term seabird dataset, while independently published, draws primarily on GECI's own monitoring network rather than a fully external verifier.