They Released Thousands of Rats Onto an Island Full of Penguins — The Results Shocked Everyone

#Penguins #Documentary #InvasiveSpecies
Removing every feral cat from Macquarie Island was supposed to save its seabirds. It nearly finished the island off. This video walks through 200 years of invasive species on a subantarctic island between Tasmania and Antarctica, starting with rats that arrived as stowaways on a sealing ship in 1810. You'll see why introducing cats to control the rats drove two bird species extinct, how releasing rabbits as a food supply stripped the hillsides until a landslide buried a king penguin colony in 2006, and what it took to clear all three species and let the island recover.