PIPA Team Back

[Chris Johnson]

The recent expeditions have arrived back in Samoa earlier this week and have reported that all went really well for island restoration/rat eradications:

PIPA Facebook page

Interesting that they found the wreckage of the 'Sydney Island Plane Crash from the war'

Nothing on the offical site as yet.

[Ric Gillespie]

You'll notice that Gardner/Nikumaroro is not on the list for rat eradication.  We've made it clear to PIPA that the rats are not a problem on Niku.  They're not the big ugly Norway rats (Ratus ratus) that eat bird eggs on other islands.  They're little Polynesian rats (Ratus exulans) and they've been there for hundreds of years and are an essential part of the ecosystem. During times of drought they can get pretty aggressive (the 1938/39 New Zealnd Survey party had a terrible time with them) but for the most part they're harmless.

A prop from the Sydney plane crash was recovered and brought to Tarawa in 2000.  In 2001 we examined it and confirmed that it's from a C-47.