Invasive mice are a big problem on the Farallon Islands and for now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has halted a plan to bombard the marine sanctuary with 1.5 tons of poison.
Mice hitched rides on sailing ships around 200 years ago, and the main worry is that they wouldn’t be the only critters that would ingest poison on the sensitive islands teeming with wildlife.
The poisoning plan sounds a little nuts to me but at the same time, federal wildlife officials insist that after some collateral bird die-offs, the natural balance would be restored, sans mice.
“California’s Galapagos” have suffered everything from the Great Egg Wars to nuclear waste dumping. Let’s make sure we get this right.
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