Island Restoration: Exploring the Past, Anticipating the Future

The conservation of seabirds requires maintenance and enhancement of their populations by reducing losses at sea and on breeding colonies. The two major methods of achieving this conservation goal use fundamentally different means. Limiting seabird mortality at sea, principally from oil spills or fishery bycatch, requires political and legal skills in dealing with industry, changing fishing techniques and gear types, and promptly responding to oil spills. Limiting seabird mortality on land, primarily caused by introduced competitors and predators, calls for ethical and sustainable poisoning, hunting and trapping techniques, and the political skills to obtain funding, to gain permission to work on public and private lands, and to navigate ethically controversial situations. Both of these approaches to seabird conservation have produced significant results in recent decades. Not only have seabird populations responded positively, but large-scale ecosystem shifts have also been detected. The current paper examines the past and future aspects of the developing field of predator eradication.