Bait drops in one of the UK’s most ambitious attempts to save seabirds on Rathlin Island

Rathlin Island holds a unique and vital position as home to a quarter of a million breeding seabirds, including the largest group of Guillemots in the whole of the UK and Ireland and Northern Ireland’s largest population of Puffins. The island's seabird populations have faced severe threats from two invasive non-native species - feral ferrets and Brown Rats. The ferrets and rats have also caused problems for the 150 people who live on Rathlin, preying on poultry and damaging property.

In large part because of nest predation by these unwanted residents, the Puffin population crashed by 83% between 1985 and 2021, and in 2023 only one in three Puffin pairs had a chick (or ‘puffling’) survive.

LIFE Raft began the first phase of the project in autumn of last year with a focus on ferrets, and in Spring 2025 the project will be able to say whether it has achieved the world’s first feral ferret eradication.

Today, the LIFE Raft team begins the next big chapter with a comprehensive approach aiming to remove the Brown Rats which found their way to Rathlin the 1800s.

Michael Rafferty, LIFE Raft Eradication Delivery Manager, said: “Years of preparation have taken us here, to this moment – we’ve drilled 6km of steel cable into cliffs, sawed nearly 7km of plastic pipe into nearly 7,000 bait stations, melted two tonnes of wax into 28,000 monitoring blocks, and marched across the island more times than I could count. In large part thanks to the support of the Rathlin community, we are in a really good place and have the best chance possible of making Rathlin Island rat- and ferret-free.”

The project has already garnered attention, notably with the addition of Woody, a two-year-old detection dog who has been instrumental in trying to locate the remaining ferrets on the island. Woody will be retrained to detect Brown Rats, further supporting the team’s efforts.

Michael Cecil, chair of the RDCA, said: “Being free of rats and ferrets would mean a lot to the Rathlin community. We’ll be able to keep poultry again, and we’ll be secure in our ecotourism, knowing that the flourishing seabirds will continue to bring joy to thousands of people every summer. It will then be critical to prevent rats from returning, and we are already putting steps in place to protect Rathlin from invasive species re-establishing.”

Claire Barnett, RSPB NI area manager, said: “The next six months could rewrite the future for Rathlin’s wildlife. Our seabirds are struggling with everything from the climate crisis to avian flu, and non-native predators on Rathlin have tipped the balance against them.

“The decline has been devastating, but we’ve seen on other islands how quickly nature can bounce back.

“We are so excited to see what the next few decades could hold for Rathlin and its seabirds.”

To find out more, please visit the Rathlin community’s website at Rathlin360.com.

LIFE Raft is a partnership between RSPB NI, the Rathlin Development and Community Association, Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Causeway Coast and Glens Heritage Trust, and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA).

It is funded by EU LIFE, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Garfield Weston Foundation, and DAERA.