Prince Edward Islands
At the beginning of the 1980s, cats brought to Marion Island, one of the Prince Edward Islands, to deal with a mouse problem in the local meteorological station, went out of growth control. Starting from the first five domestic cats introduced on the island on 1949, there were about 3,400 cats in 1977, feeding on the burrowing petrels instead of the mice, threatening to drive the birds to extinction. A cat eradication program was set up and few cats were intentionally infected with the panleukopenia virus, which reduced the number of cats to about 600 by 1982.
Read more about this topic: Feline Panleukopenia
Famous quotes containing the words prince, edward and/or islands:
“A frog in love would not be enchanted to learn that her beloved had turned into Prince Charming.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
““Why does your brand so drop with blood,
Edward, Edward?”
—Unknown. Edward (l. 1–2)
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)