Rabbits blamed for penguin deaths in landslide

The landslip hit a penguin rookery at Lusitania Bay on Macquarie Island. (file photo) (ABC)



Erosion and heavy spring rains have caused a large landslip on Macquarie Island, in the Southern Ocean about 1500 kilometres south-east of Tasmania, killing penguins in an important colony.
The fragile sub-Antarctic world heritage area has been overrun with more than 100,000 rabbits in recent years, which are stripping the island bare of its plants.
Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service general manager Peter Mooney says the landslip happened late last month at Lusitania Bay, on the eastern side of the island, about 25 kilometres from Australia's research base.
He says about 500 square metres of soil gave way due to the combination of heavy spring rains and severe erosion caused by the rabbits.




"The landslide... has come down onto an area where the penguins roost, and are active," he said.
"These are large penguins, so the topsoil has come down the slope and landed on the flat surface near the ocean.
"The penguins have chicks in place next to the adults and a number of penguins were killed by the landslide.
"We can't tell how many because it's on the edge of the rookeries."
A $10 million rabbit eradication plan has not yet received funding approval from the federal or Tasmanian governments.
Mr Mooney says the eradication plan is vital.
"As you can appreciate it's a number of years the program would have to be adopted over, and a large share of the funding would have to be expended in the first few years to have the major knockdown," he said.
"Then you have the last few years in a continuous monitoring program and we certainly need a large amount of funding in the first few years and then it would scale off after that."


Reference:>abc