Hello, this isWild Suzhou. Today, we willtalk about “Rat Island”, an island of the coast of Alaska, USA that shows thestrength of ecosystems and nature. “Rat island”, wasan island that was accidentally introduced to rats, since rats weren’tnaturally found there. This was because of ships sailing to the area and alsopeople who stayed on the island during World War II. As a result, the invasivespecies spread its way through the island and people started to call it RatIsland. Rodents are very resilient, and because of this, they are verydangerous to natural ecosystems since they reproduce easily and are hard to getrid of. They easily adapted to their new habitat and quickly ruined theecosystem. However, aconservation group was able to remove the rats from the island, and what’s interestingabout this is that the ecosystem on the island was able to heal and go back tonormal. The island, now renamed Hawadax island, was able to return to itsnatural state in just over ten years. The problem withthe rats on the island was that they were predators, and would often eat eggsand chicks. This nearly wiped out the shorebird population, since so many eggsand chicks were being eaten. As a result, the populations of snails and seasnails that the shorebirds ate grew a lot and started killing off the kelp inthe ocean. So to reverse the effect, the conservation group removed all of therats in 2008, and were now able to watch the process of recovery on HawadaxIsland. Once the rats wereonce, seabirds were able to repopulate and started eating snails again, helpingkelp to grow again in the waters surrounding Hawadax Island. Overall, thisstudy shows how destructive rats can be, and also how resilient naturalecosystems can be to heal so quickly. For Wild Suzhou,I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.