Radio Script
1999

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Island Rat Patrol!
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STORY: Populated by Russians, Aleuts and now Americans for over 200 years, harbor construction at St. Paul and St. George greatly increased the likelihood of rat introduction to the Pribilofs. Harbormaster of nine years and now port director, Andrey Mandregan Jr., tells why St. Paul never got rats before the harbor construction:

ANDREY MANDREGAN JR.: "Prior to the breakwater's construction, we used skin boats to haul the cargo in from the cargo vessel. We could have seen them then, but we never did." Because of this threat, in 1993 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with the help of the Pribilof residents, started a rat prevention program. In 1996 on St. Paul, six rats were killed at the docks and fewer every year since. As of today, no rats have been observed anywhere on the island. The program seems to be working, as wildlife biologist and a leader of the program, Art Sowls, explains:

ART SOWLS: "The Fish and Wildlife Service has a very vested interest in seeing that the rats are kept off the Pribilofs; there's about 3 million nesting birds and about 1 million fur seals. The city governments of St. Paul and St. George both passed ordinances on rodent prevention, and that includes barring infested ships from entering the harbor; preventive programs being required by the onshore processors."

St. Paul's Tribal Ecosystem Conservation Office hired Dustin Jones to help keep the rat prevention program running. Jones tells about the wooden boxes which hold snap traps and poison, and how he keeps them working:

DUSTIN JONES: "Well, we mostly put them around the industrial area of the harbor, because there are a lot of places where they can hide. We just open up the box and check the snap trap, make sure it's not rusty; then we open up the poison station, make sure it's all working right."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is so serious about rat prevention that it has formed a shipwreck response team. It's an aggressive preventive program designed to stay one step ahead of rat introduction by accident or ignorance. Sowls talks about the goal of the shipwreck response team and their efforts to educate everyone about rat prevention:

ART SOWLS: "We'd respond to a rat spill pretty much like responding to an oil spill. We've recently started a new aspect to the program that was funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and that's where we've put together a video on the rat threat, and prevention kits. We've been giving these out free to ships that come in and out of the Pribilof Islands."

Although the economic progress to St. Paul resulting from the new dock facilities has been positive, the rat prevention program can really only succeed with the help of the fishing industry. The good news is that most of the visiting fishing fleets do care. Art Sowls says they won't know for another twenty years if the rat prevention program has really worked. So far so good, but the hardest thing will be to keep the program going. Everyone on the island will need to stay involved. Mandregan, a lifelong resident of St. Paul, believes it's possible and that history supports him:

ANDREY MANDREGAN JR.: "We love our island. What we have, we try to protect. It's been like that for generations . . . way back."

OUTRO: From the Sea Grant Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, this is Arctic Science Journeys. I'm Kathy Turco.