Rats

According to a Facebook post from the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government, a rat was potentially spotted on Wednesday. The tribal government’s Ecosystem Conservation Office is working to confirm the sighting using trail cameras at the city fourplex where the unconfirmed sighting was reported.

For millions of years, birds lived nearly predator free in the Aleutian Islands. The volcanic archipelago stretches westward for 1,200 miles from the Alaska Peninsula, dotting a border between the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. Hundreds of bird species thrived here. But then came the rats. When a Japanese boat sank in the Western Aleutians around 1780, stowaway rats jumped ship and made it to one of the islands, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.