Island Conservation

Island Conservation is a non-profit organization with the mission to "restore islands for nature and people worldwide" and has therefore focused its efforts on islands with species categorized as Critically Endangered and Endangered on the IUCN's Red List. Working in partnership with local communities, government management agencies, and conservation organizations, Island Conservation develops plans and implements the removal of invasive alien species, and conducts field research to document the benefits of the work and to inform future projects.

Island Conservation's approach is now being shown to have a wider beneficial effect on the marine systems surrounding its project areas. In addition, invasive vertebrate eradication has now been shown to have many benefits besides conservation of species. Specifically, the approach has been found to align with 13 UN Sustainable Development Goals and 42 associated targets encompassing marine and terrestrial biodiversity conservation, promotion of local and global partnerships, economic development, climate change mitigation, human health and sanitation and sustainable production and consumption.

To date Island Conservation has deployed teams to protect 1,195 populations of 487 species and subspecies on 64 islands.

The work of Island Conservation is not without controversy, This is documented in the book ''Battle at the End of Eden''. Restoring islands requires removing whole populations of an invasive species. There is an ethical question of whether humankind has the right to remove one species to save others. However, a 2019 study suggests that if eradications of invasive animals were conducted on just 169 islands, the survival prospects of 9.4% of the Earth's most highly threatened terrestrial insular vertebrates would be improved. Provided by Wikipedia