Eradicating Mice on the Farallones

If protecting one endangered species means other, less threatened species are harmed in the process, where is the ethical and environmental balance point? That's the issue the US Fish and Wildlife Service is wrestling with as they attempt to eradicate a plague of non-native house mice on the Farallon Islands.

Both before and after a May 12 public meeting hosted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to explain the issue, most media coverage has focused on the possibility of "carpet bombing" the islands with poison, as one report characterized it. While that is one of the options that will be examined, agency spokesman Doug Condell says they are just beginning to study the responses they could deploy.

Protecting the endangered birds that nest on the Farallones is all very well, says Maggie Sergio of Wildcare, but at what cost to other species?

Sergio adds that her concerns about the possible use of the rodenticide are more than hypothetical, as the damaging consequences of that approach have already been demonstrated elsewhere.