Goodbye Rats, Hello… Hawadax?

Hawadax Island. It doesn’t conjure up images of umbrella drinks, and moonlit strolls on the sand. It sounds more like one of those islands where they sent large groups of people with contagious and incurable diseases, but it’s actually quite lovely.

“Hawadax” means “those two over there” in the Alaskan Unungan language, (referring to two knolls that dominate the island’s topography) which isn’t really that thrilling either – until you get the whole story. Because however unappealing Hawadax “Those Two Over There” Island may sound, it could have been a lot worse. In fact, it was a lot worse until very recently.

It all began some time in the 1780s, when a Japanese ship infested with rats had the bad manners to crash into an innocent and unassuming little island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain. The beady-eyed stowaways had a grand ol’ time on shore leave, and so the island formerly known as Hawadax became even less charmingly known as “Rat Island.”

But it wasn’t just an unappealing name that came with the rats – they also brought their appetites. Rats need to eat, and they began to feed on the plentiful seabirds and eggs on the island. A full 50% of the continent’s sea birds nest in the Aleutians, and While other islands in the area were teeming with bird life, the skies over Rat Island were eerily quiet on account of the all-you-can-eat poultry buffet. Bird populations on the 11-mile long island were decimated.

In 2009, Rat Island became the subject of a seabird habitat restoration program that basically peppered the island with buckets of rat poison dropped from helicopters. There were some unfortunate bird casualties from that as well, as larger predatory birds dined on the toxic carcasses. But now, after checking back, it seems that all the unwanted rodentia have been dispatched, and the island is ready again to welcome back populations of puffins, murres, auklets, oystercatchers, Aleutian cackling geese, and Leach’s storm-petrels. The latter was particularly hard hit because of its loud and distinct mating call, which loosely translated into Rat means, “Wait right here. Your egg order will be ready in a moment. We appreciate your patience.”

~Leach’s Storm-Petrel

So, 230+ years, and a whole lot of rat poison later, Rat Island was no longer aptly named.

But, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (who knew?) made the name change back to “Hawadax” official last month, after they received a petition from the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association to restore the Native name to the island.

“We are also grateful to the three conservation partners of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation whose cooperative efforts led the island restoration that eradicated the infestation of the rats on Hawadax Island. Furthermore, I wish to recognize APIA’s environmental and safety program manager, Ms. Karen Pletnikoff who first expressed the desire to return the island to its historical name and led the effort to submit the petition,” said Dmitri Philemonof, President/CEO of the Aleutioan Pribilof Islands Association.

The next monitoring trip is scheduled for 2013, but so far it seems like the bird population is starting to increase, and all is well in the rocky cliffs of the uninhabited island 1300 miles west of Anchorage, and 200 miles from Adak. The whiskered, wormy-tailed overlords have been vanquished and the birdocide is over.

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