Just over a year ago, many of us were gathered in Edinburgh at the Biosecurity for LIFE end-of-project conference, hopefully making lasting connections and gaining access to new opportunities for biosecurity collaboration and information sharing. Whilst Biosecurity for LIFE was celebrating a successful outcome - 95% of UK’s seabird island SPAs were now safeguarded by biosecurity action – and winning the prestigious Nature of Scotland Award, in the background three new projects were already quietly getting on with the business of Biosecurity AfterLIFE. Now, a year after Biosecurity for LIFE ended, RSPB’s Senior Seabird Recovery Officer Laura Bambini reflects on what the legacy projects have achieved so far, and whether island biosecurity is becoming business-as-usual across the UK.
The Biosecurity for LIFE team of four full-time staff has grown to a team of eight project-funded staff across England, Scotland, and Wales, including a part-time Biosecurity Detection Dog handler in each country. Jinx, the very first dog to join our team, continues to patrol seabird islands in Wales with his handler to support biosecurity surveillance efforts and to help out in an incursion response if needed. Adding Biosecurity Detection Dog teams to cover islands in England and Scotland has been a real boost to our surveillance efforts and has provided great opportunities to engage with island communities, visitors, and others to spread the word about why biosecurity is so important for protecting seabird islands. It’s been fantastic to see sites and island communities maintaining their biosecurity measures and surveillance checks, and a periodic Biosecurity Detection Dog visit serves to give us confidence that the systems in place are working.
L-R: Laura and Kuki (Biosecurity for England), Sian (Kryus - dog handling training company), Rachel minus Reid (Biosecurity for Scotland) and Greg and Jinx (Biosecurity for Wales)
The network of organisations and individuals engaged in biosecurity action has also grown across the UK. In Northern Ireland, where there isn’t yet a dedicated Biosecurity legacy project, the LIFE Raft project is strengthening biosecurity on Rathlin to ensure long-lasting benefits of the current ferret and rat eradication, to the island’s seabird populations – and people! In Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland is a partner on the Biosecurity for Scotland project but is also actively investing in biosecurity across the islands in its care, and the Northern Lighthouse Board has a biosecurity plan to cover its operations on seabird islands. In Cornwall, biosecurity is one of the key factors the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust and partners are considering as they investigate the feasibility of eradicating rats from several islands in the Scilly archipelago. Around the UK a number of volunteers regularly undertake biosecurity surveillance checks on seabird islands and help look after the incursion response hubs. We are actively recruiting new volunteers and growing the range of volunteering activities and skills training on offer through the programme.
In Scotland, we have embarked on a pilot Predator Free Certification scheme to help boat operators sail without stowaways and plan to roll it out more widely across the country in the coming years. The hope is that in the future, anyone travelling to a UK seabird island will receive biosecurity information and guidance with their booking and will be aware of important pre-departure checks and measures to take. Yachts, ferries, tour boats, cruise ships and fishing vessels are the most likely means by which invasive mammalian predators can reach our seabird islands, as many of them are beyond their swimming distance – especially for rodents. In the last year, we have also responded to or supported site staff in responding to seven suspected or confirmed incursion events, highlighting the importance of continued vigilance and biosecurity surveillance – and the critical role of trained and well-resourced incursion response teams who can act swiftly to safeguard our seabirds.
Biosecurity practices are clearly becoming more widespread across the UK, but is the prevention, early detection, and rapid response to signs of invasive mammalian predators now business-as-usual on our seabird islands? Getting there, but not quite yet… Although increasing numbers of boat operators now include biosecurity messaging in their booking confirmation, or in some other way encourage pre-departure biosecurity checks, this isn’t yet the universal experience of visitors to our internationally important seabird islands. Some Local Authorities include biosecurity measures as a condition on planning consents for developments taking place on seabird islands, and requests for our Biosecurity Dog teams to carry out checks on island-bound cargo loads are trickling in. Prevention still has many rat-sized holes to plug.
Whilst our capacity to respond has improved – since 2020 the response rate to suspected and confirmed incursions has consistently been 100% - resourcing incursion responses remains difficult and they can pose technical and logistical challenges. And we haven’t always been there to spot incursions when they happen.
During Biosecurity for LIFE, we found newly established rat populations on three Special Protection Area seabird islands. Rats had gotten to these islands at some point in the preceding few years, we don’t know when, or how. The chances of spotting an incursion in its earliest stages (and stopping it from becoming an invasion) are much greater when trail cameras, chew blocks and cards, tracking tunnels and specially trained detection dogs are regularly used in surveillance. This, at least, is now business-as-usual on most of our internationally important seabird islands.
Biosecurity station set up on Annet. Photo by Jaclyn Pearson