In this blog, Biosecurity Officer, Holly Paget-Brown shares the role Biosecurity Officers play in getting Rapid Incursion Response Hubs set up. The project collaborated with an existing hub team, on the Isles of Scilly, and have now set up a further six hubs around the UK.
What are Rapid...
It has been a month since Jinx arrived with the project. Here Greg Morgan Jinx’s handler gives an update on how he is settling into island life.
What better way to learn about the environment and island biosecurity than being a warden for the day?
This week is Invasive Species Week and today puts the focus on biosecurity! Since August 2018 Biosecurity for LIFE has been working across the UKs 42 seabird island SPAs in partnership with RSPB, National Trust and National Trust for Scotland. Today we welcome a guest blog from National Trust to hear about the experiences from three of their important seabird islands. The National Trust cares for some of the UK’s most beautiful and diverse seabird colonies – often on remote and sometimes uninhabited islands. Home to puffins and kittiwakes, Manx shearwater and eider ducks, these far-off places are havens for wildlife. For the Trust, biosecurity is paramount to keeping these seabirds thriving. Here, three staff members from the National Trust reflect on the islands they care for – and why keeping them free of invaders is so important.
Biosecurity for LIFE guest blog by Greg Morgan (RSPB Cymru) with a foreword by Laura Bambini (Project Executive, Biosecurity for LIFE)
Biosecurity for LIFE recently held a biosecurity event on St Agnes to thank the community for their continued hard work in ensuring St Agnes and Gugh remain rodent-free following the Isles of Scilly Seabird Recovery Project. Brown rats were removed from the islands back in 2013 in the world’s first rat removal project of this size that was community led. In 2014, for the first time in living memory the burrow nesting Manx shearwater started successfully breeding on the islands again followed in 2015 by the return of breeding European storm petrel with numbers of both increasing ever since. It was fantastic to see the positive results of recent surveys carried out by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust who delivered a talk on the day.
What could be more exciting than working in island biosecurity in the UK? Well, what certainly comes close is sharing our experiences and learning with our European colleagues and finding out about their work to implement biosecurity on ever more islands!