Above picture: Peter Harrison MBE and Shirley Metz at BirdLife South Africa’s Cape Town headquarters, 28 March 2024; photograph by John Cooper
The Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project took the opportunity to invite Peter Harrison MBE and his partner Shirley Metz during their visit to Cape Town late last month for afternoon tea at BirdLife South Africa’s recently opened Cape Town headquarters in Claremont. The project has an office in the renovated Victorian house which serves as a meeting place for its widely scattered team. Peter is one of the project’s six international Patrons and is the first to visit us “at home”. He will be well known to many of the supporters of the MFM Project as a seabirder extraordinaire through his seabird identification books and his presence as a much-appreciated lecturer and guide aboard the Flock to Marion 2022 voyage, and on the two previous Flocks at Sea voyages.
Peter Harrison, Reason Nyengera, BirdLife South Africa’s Albatross Task Force Project Manager and Shirley Metz with a framed photograph of a Wandering Albatross in flight that Peter had signed for BirdLife South Africa during the Flock to Marion 2022 voyage; photograph by John Cooper
Following introductions to both the MFM Project and BirdLife South Africa Seabird Conservation Programme staff present, Peter and Shirley were taken on a tour of the building where they admired the many donated artworks that fill the corridor walls and rooms, including the albatross posters that decorate the project’s own office. We then moved to the comfortable lounge for tea and carrot cake, allowing everyone to become better acquainted and discuss the project (and seabird conservation in general) with the MFM Project’s first-appointed Patron. Peter confirmed his support for the MFM Project and, based on his first-hand experience of the recovery of South Georgia after its rodents were eradicated, he expected a similar recovery on Marion Island after its mice are gone. He also told us that he and his company, Apex Expeditions, are planning a trip to Taiwan in the next year or two, in an endeavour to see the Critically Endangered Chinese Crested Tern, one of the world’s rarest seabirds with an adult population of not more than 50 individuals, and the only one of the 435 species he is yet to see!
John Cooper, MFM Project News Correspondent, Peter Harrison and Shirley Metz in the African Penguin Boardroom with books donated by the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa; photograph by Robyn Adams
The visit concluded in the boardroom (named after the Endangered African Penguin) where Peter and Shirley were presented with three books about Marion and Prince Edward Islands that had been kindly donated by their publisher, the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa. The project’s News Correspondent, John Cooper, then took the opportunity to request Peter to sign his personal copy of Peter’s substantially revised second edition of his seabird identification guide, which brought back good memories of their visit together to both islands way back in April 1983.
A valued signature indeed. Read my review of Peter’s 2021 book here; photographs by John Cooper here.
The MFM Project Team is most grateful to Peter and Shirley for giving up their last afternoon in Cape Town to visit us, and for all they are doing “behind the scenes” to help raise the essential funds required to eradicate Marion’s House Mice that continue to attack and kill its beleaguered albatrosses and petrels.
From left: John Cooper, MFM News Correspondent, Robyn Adams, MFM Communications Officer, Peter Harrison, Shirley Metz, Sue Tonin, MFM Assistant Project Manager and Guy Preston, Vice-Chair, MFM Non-Profit Company; photograph by Eleanor Weideman
With thanks to Ria Olivier, Principal Investigator, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Stellenbosch University for the donated books.
John Cooper, News Correspondent, Mouse-Free Marion Project, 18 April 2024
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Two Wandering Albatrosses display on Marion Island; photograph by Sean Evans and poster design by Michelle Risi
The Mouse-Free Marion Project is a registered non-profit company (No. 2020/922433/08) in South Africa, established to eradicate the invasive albatross-killing mice on Marion Island in the Southern Ocean. The project was initiated by BirdLife South Africa and the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. Upon successful completion, the project will restore the critical breeding habitat of over two million seabirds, many globally threatened, and improve the island’s resilience to a warming climate. For more information or to support the project please visit mousefreemarion.org.
