{"id":490200,"date":"2026-03-23T02:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490200\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T02:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:04:08","slug":"world-first-as-rathlin-island-is-declared-ferret-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490200\/","title":{"rendered":"World-first as Rathlin Island is declared ferret free"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rats are thought to have travelled over on boats in the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

The ferret is thought to have been brought in deliberately in the 1980s to control pests.<\/p>\n

But instead of hunting rabbits and rats, it rapidly turned its attention to the easy prey of ground-nesting birds, their eggs and chicks.<\/p>\n

Erin McKeown, RSPB NI’s Senior Seabird and Marine Policy Officer, said breeding seabirds across the UK and Ireland have declined by 62% over the last two decades.<\/p>\n

“Here on Rathlin in 2017, a feral ferret reached one of our puffin colonies and killed 27 puffins in a two-day period,” she said.<\/p>\n

“So we’re hoping alleviating that invasive non-native species pressure will allow our seabirds space to breed, raise their young and flourish once more.”<\/p>\n

Life Raft was launched in 2021 to rid the island of both ferrets and rats.<\/p>\n

More than 400 ferret traps were laid in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Almost 7,000 handmade rat bait traps were set every 250m across the island in 2024.<\/p>\n

Claire Barnett said providing seabirds with safe breeding spaces is crucial as they face massive challenges globally.<\/p>\n

“Seabirds are in big trouble – when they’re not inland nesting, they’re out in the seas, so they’re under a huge amount of pressure from climate change, from our warming waters, from overfishing, from plastic pollution.<\/p>\n

“All of those things are having serious implications for these birds, but what we can do and do quite quickly is make sure they’ve got a safe place to nest.<\/p>\n

“Because they’re seabirds, they have one egg every year, and if they don’t get those birds away, the numbers are going to dwindle very, very quickly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rats are thought to have travelled over on boats in the nineteenth century. The ferret is thought to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-490200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}