On Friday, September 29, 2023Redonda, the Caribbean island, was transformed from a bare, rocky landscape overrun with rats to a lush wildlife haven in just a few years. It’s called the Redonda Ecosystem Reserve and it covers 30,000 acres of protected land.
The island had been a former place to mine to guano or “white gold” which is bird excrement, used for fertilizer or gunpowder. As more people came to the island to mine for the guano they brought rats with them. The rats began to breed and eat all the plants at the island, which was destroying the habitat for the birds that thrived there. Eventually Redonda turned into a bare wasteland with only one inhabitant, rats.
In 2016, people began to try and restore the island by removing all the rats. As soon as all the rats were gone the vegetation began to grow back and all the different species of bird began to come back.
Helena Jeffery Brown, a technical coordinator in the Department for Environment and founding member of the Redonda restoration program says the success of the protected area is in the islanders’ interest. She says, “On small and developing island states our survival is dependent on having a robust biodiversity. When we don’t have robust biodiversity, our islands are less resilient to changes: to climate change, to pollution, to invasives , to other driving forces.”
The end goal for the island is to act as a “Shining Light.” Redonda became a protected area because many endangered species of bird and reptile thrived there. The vegetation biomass has increased 2,000% since all the rats were removed and the circle of life has restarted.
The island has been officially rat free since 2018.
