The Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project has released its 10th Quarterly Newsletter. Dated July 2024 with 20 well-illustrated pages, it has been compiled, edited and laid out by the project’s Communications Officer and Project Assistant, Robyn Adams.
The Editorial summarizes activities undertaken by the project over the last three months. In May, Dr Anton Wolfaardt (MFM Project Manager) and Camilla Smyth (MFM Project Overwintering Research Assistant for 2023/24) returned to South Africa after Anton participated in the 2024 annual relief voyage to Marion Island. Anton travelled to the island with Monique van Bers, who has taken over from Camilla as the MFM Project Research Assistant for 2024/25.
Back home from the island, Anton made his second running of a 52-km mountain trail run, raising over R 103 000 for the project via a highly successful online appeal. With this success, the MFM Project is planning several more appeals over the rest of the year and into the next that aim to target runners, hikers, walkers and cyclists.
Anton at the start of the 34th Rhodes Trail Run, holding the official buff of Marion Island’s 80th Overwintering Team of 2023/24 that depicts displaying Wandering Albatrosses; photograph by Leigh Wolfaardt
In the following article “Thirteen Months without a Banana”, Camilla describes her year spent on the island as a “once-in-a-lifetime adventure”, conducting essential field research required to help develop the project’s Operational Plan.
Camilla Smyth on the cliff top above a Grey-headed Albatross breeding colony, Rook’s Bay, Marion Island; photograph by herself
Information is then given on BirdLife South Africa’s Flock to Marion AGAIN! 2025 voyage in the Southern Ocean, to take place between 24-31 January 2025. With berths still available, although selling well, you can still join an epic seven-night birding voyage in support of the MFM Project aboard the MSC Musica on an adventure into the surrounding waters of South Africa’s Southern Ocean territory, Marion and Prince Edward Islands.
The next article recounts a recent attack by House Mice on a globally Vulnerable Wandering Albatross chick in a Marion Island study colony first set up in the early 1980s. This sad news, along with accompanying distressing photographs, formed a press release in late July. With the help of the London-based Culture Communications Collective (CCC) the story has been taken up by over 125 media outlets in South Africa, the United Kingdom and beyond.
Fatally attacked by Marion Island’s introduced House Mice, this Wandering Albatross chick soon died of its injuries; photograph by Vanessa Stephen, July 2024
An introduction to Beate Hölscher and Liezl Pretorius, the MFM Project’s new Research and Reporting Officers, wraps up the latest newsletter. Beate and Liezl have joined the existing MFM Development Officer, Tarryn Havemann, in focusing on specific aspects of fundraising, while collaborating with the rest of the MFM Project team on various related tasks.
The plan to eradicate mice on Marion Island is progressing well. The MFM Project team is continuing its hard work to secure the necessary funding and approvals and conduct the detailed research and planning to ensure a successful eradication operation.
Download our latest newsletter, read it, pass it on – and please consider supporting the project with a sponsorship or a donation. All nine previous Quarterly Newsletters are available for downloading from here.
John Cooper, News Correspondent, Mouse-Free Marion Project, 22 August 2024
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Young Wandering Albatrosses engage in mutual display; photograph by Alexis Osborne 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.
