Malaysia: Pulau Redang turtles under siege from rats

FIRDAOUS FADZIL The Star 26 May 15;

KUALA TERENGGANU: The turtle population in Pulau Redang near here is being decimated by a colony of particularly hardy rats, which have so far managed to thwart multiple efforts to eradicate them.

The rats are threatening a long-term sea turtle conservation site at Chagar Hutang, Redang Island, said Dr Juanita Joseph, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu's (UMT) head of sea turtle research station there.

"The rats will eat baby turtles alive."

She said the rats had been their main enemy in their turtle conservation efforts over the past decade, and there is a pressing need for more substantial rat eradication measures.

"Besides eating the eggs, these rats will also eat baby turtles alive. The rats will wait for the baby turtle to emerge from the sand after hatching.

"They usually only eat the belly and head because the shell is too hard for them," she told reporters when met at UMT's Sultanah Nur Zahirah library auditorium, here on Tuesday.

She said the problem escalated in 1996 and she had been battling the threat on her own since then.

"Over the past few years, I have tried using many different kinds of trap to catch the mouse but kept failing," she said.

At her wit's end, Dr Juanita almost resorted to using rat poison.

"But I decided not to because it is dangerous for us humans too. Rats carry lethal viruses like Leptospirosis and we do not want them to die in the river near our research station, which is also our main water source," she said.

Now, Ensystex, an American pest control company, together with Insepro Sdn Bhd are working together as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) by installing automatic traps that humanely kill pest animals dubbed the Goodnature E2 Automatic humane rat and mouse trap.

Steve Broadbent, Ensystex regional director said the trap was friendly to the environment as it did not use any chemicals.

He said rats caught in the trap are killed instantly by a mechanism which delivers a blow to the rodent's head.

Broadbent said the trap resets itself after each kill.

"It also avoids killing non-target species," he added.

Dr Juanita explained that other rodents such as fire ants, ghost crabs and lizards were also threats to baby turtles.

"We are working hard to find ways to handle them but we are focusing on the rats first because they are the largest threat," she said.

She added that besides the turtles, electrical cables were also falling victim to the rats.

"I bought a US$300 (RM1,088) satellite cable from the United States which took months to arrive.

"The rats destroyed it only after a day," she said.