17 July 2017

The Island Invasives Conference 2017 was held in Dundee (Scotland) from 10 to 14 July. It was an occasion for the experts from all over the world to meet and talk about invasive alien species on islands, their impact, and how to mitigate it. The conference was opened by Princess Anna of England, witnessing the great importance given to biodiversity conservation issues in the United Kingdom.

LIFE PonDerat was one of the leading participants in the conference, with the speech of Dario Capizzi who presented the almost 20-year Italian experience in the eradication of rats from small islands. In addition to showing the positive effects observed on sea birds after rat eradication on several Italian islands, Dr. Capizzi showed how, thanks to the experience gained, the techniques have improved over time, now allowing PonDerat project to adopt the best technical solutions available today. Thanks to these experiences, today we can face rat eradication on islands with larger size and with inhabited centers (such as Ventotene), with clear socio-economic benefits for residents in addiction to those on biodiversity.

A great interest was also aroused by the speech of Dr. Paolo Sposimo, who presented the approaches and results of rat eradication from the islands of the Tuscany Archipelago, carried out within two PonDerat's friends, the projects Resto con Life and LIFE Montecristo 2010.

It was an intense and exciting conference, Italian experiences aroused a great interest with numerous questions asked by the international audience, culminated in a workshop on the management of problems and failures. Events like this are a great opportunity to share experiences and join our forces to preserve island ecosystems around the world.