Wake-up call for atoll's rats

On the positive side, he travels to beautiful islands throughout the Abel Tasman and around the world but, less appealingly, he spends his time on them with rats, mice and stoats.

Chris Golding, a biodiversity ranger for the Department of Conservation's Motueka branch, departed for Wake Atoll this week, where he will be part of a small team who will spend five weeks creating a biomarker study outlining the possibility of wiping out the island's rat population.

Mr Golding was approached to take part in the study by New Zealand's Island Eradication Advisory Group, which had been contacted by Canadian contractors Island Conservation to find two New Zealand members for the team.

The eradication team, which will also include Te Anau DOC worker Nick Torr and two Canadians, will conduct the study by positioning different quantities of rat bait in various parts of the island. The bait will contain a coloured dye, which will allow the team to monitor how much of the poison the rats are eating compared to how much is being harmlessly but unhelpfully devoured by the island's many land crabs.

The advisory group is hoping to use Mr Golding's expertise in island pest eradication and give him a chance to increase his knowledge in a different setting.

On the face of it, rodents may be a strange passion, but Mr Golding said he enjoyed the challenge of island eradications, because "you've got to get every last one".

Wake Atoll, a coral island about 19 kilometres in circumference in the Marshall Islands group, is manned by personnel from the United States' Department of Defence. It is located about 3700km from Honolulu, or "smack bang in the middle of nowhere", as Mr Golding puts it.

As well as the new challenge, he is also looking forward to kayaking, snorkelling and windsurfing there.

- © Fairfax NZ News