Island conservation should focus on land-sea links for most impact, paper says

Stuart Sandin’s first impression of Palmyra Atoll, a remote island in the central Pacific Ocean, during a visit in 2004, was troubled. There were seabirds, but their presence was fragmented, likely because of the rats that had hitched a ride on board military ships and invaded the atoll during World War II. On walks through the forest, Sandin found broken eggshells and bird skeletons: evidence of rat predation.

But when conservation experts worked to eradicate the rats from Palmyra Atoll in 2011, the island and surrounding sea started to change, Sandin said.

“Within a few years, the sound of the seabirds got a lot louder, and the coconut crabs, once seemingly uncommon, had made the [island’s] field camp into a stomping ground,” Sandin, a community ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in a press conference.

According to Sandin, seabirds are “connector” species, feeding in the open ocean and depositing nutrients both on the island’s terrain and in the coastal waters. In other words, seabirds create a vital link between land and sea, strengthening the overall island ecosystem.