MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Agreement on the Conservation of Albatross signed at Australia

Australia's championing of albatross protection from long-line fishing started a process that last week led to Hobart becoming the world for protecting these giant seabirds.

The permanent secretariat for the international Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels will, for the moment, share offices in Salamanca Square with the State Government's Antarctic Tasmania agency.

A memorandum of understanding to support the Hobart base for the secretariat was signed by the parliamentary secretary to the federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, and state Economic Development Minister Lara Giddings.

ACAP advisory committee vice chairman John Cooper, from the University of Capetown in South Africa, said it was fitting for the secretariat to be based in Tasmania because of its links to Antarctica and the fact that some albatross breeding areas were in the region.

"Long-line fishing was the initial drive behind ACAP and it was really Australia that blew the whistle on that practice," Dr Cooper said. "So Tasmania is a good centre for that."

In related news the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has warned that a mice infestation in Gough Island, in mid Atlantic, has put come species in danger of extinction. Super size mice are eating seabird chicks alive in the most southerly of the British Overseas Territory Tristan da Cunha group of islands which is used a nesting ground for 22 bird species, of which ten sea birds including albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters.

It is estimated that at any moment ten million birds can be found in the island. Until the 19th Century the birds were largely safe from predators but with the arrival of man and mice aboard the ships they have infested the islands and grown large, partly because of the abundant new food source.

The albatross chicks spend eight months sitting waiting for food from their parents. They are nearly a metre tall and 250 times the weight of the mice but are largely immobile and cannot defend themselves and the mice gnaw into the birds' flesh as they sit on the ground. Researchers have seen as many as eight or 10 rodents feasting on a single ailing chick.

"For the albatrosses on Gough, which hosts virtually the whole populations of several species, this just adds to the long-lining problem - not only are they threatened at sea they are now also threatened on land" said Dr Richard Cuthbert a biologist with RSPB.

Actually the RSPB has been awarded £62,000 by the UK government's Overseas Territories Environment Programme to fund research on the Gough Island mice and a feasibility study of how best to deal with them. Some of the rodents will be tracked to learn more about their behaviour, before a control programme is introduced.

Dr Richard Cuthbert, a biologist with the RSPB said that using poisons "is an option" and has been used with success in New Zealand.