Ua Pou Islet Rat Eradication — Marquesas Seabird Restoration

The Marquesas archipelago in French Polynesia holds seabird colonies of Pacific-wide significance, but introduced rats have collapsed breeding on most accessible islands. Ua Pou's three uninhabited islets — Motu Takaē, Motu Ōa and Motu Mokohe — still held remnant colonies of Baillon's shearwater and grey-backed tern among 14 recorded seabird species, and habitat for two petrel species not confirmed since 1995.

In 2023, the Société d'Ornithologie de Polynésie (SOP Manu) carried out the operation with BirdLife International's Pacific Regional Invasive Species Management Support Service (PRISMSS), delivering rodenticide by drone launched from a boat at sea — chosen over helicopter and micro-copter options — under the regional coordination of SPREP (which has overseen Pacific invasive-species eradications since 2019) and funding from the EU-backed PROTEGE project.

A 15-day monitoring mission completed by 30 September 2024, using tracking tunnels and night cameras across all three islets, found no evidence of rats on any of them. Field teams also reported burrow returns by Baillon's shearwaters and a small grey-backed tern presence on Motu Mokohe as early positive signs.

As a caveat, the operation is recent and no post-eradication seabird population counts have yet been published — the reported outcomes are presence/absence monitoring and qualitative observations, not population recovery data. The wider Marquesas restoration plan covers roughly eight further islands, of which only Ua Pou is complete; Island Conservation estimated around $3 million USD is still needed to fund the remaining islands.

Read the full analysis: https://www.sprep.org/news/encouraging-update-on-seabird-conservation-in-ua-pou-marquesas-one-year-post-rat-eradication-efforts