Campbell Island, a remote subantarctic territory some 700 kilometres south of New Zealand's South Island, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 partly on the strength of its royal albatross colony — the largest in the world. The island had no permanent human population after the closure of its meteorological station in 1995, though a small team of researchers returned in 2001 to complete one of the most successful rodent eradication programs ever undertaken, eliminating an estimated 200,000 Norway rats that had devastated ground-nesting seabirds for over a century.
Campbell Island, a remote subantarctic territory some 700 kilometres south of New Zealand's South Island, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 partly on the strength of its royal albatross colony — the largest in the world. The island had no permanent human population after the closure of its meteorological station in 1995, though a small team of researchers returned in 2001 to complete one of the most successful rodent eradication programs ever undertaken, eliminating an estimated 200,000 Norway rats that had devastated ground-nesting seabirds for over a century.