Wildlife artist ROBERT FULLER enjoys a right royal day out to celebrate the success of a conservation project.

THE wealth of wildlife in Antarctica is breathtaking, as anyone who has been watching David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet on BBC1 will know.

But the survival of some of its species is under threat thanks to rats that were introduced, inadvertently, more than 100 years ago by whalers and sealers.

This year scientists came up with, and have already begun to put into practice, one of the most ambitious conservation plans in history.

They aim to eradicate all rodents from the island of South Georgia, which is host to the world’s most unique bird colonies.

In September, I was invited to a ceremony at the House of Lords, hosted by Baroness Young of Old Scone and attended by HRH Princess Anne to mark the early success of the campaign.

It is the biggest rodent eradication campaign in history and I was fascinated to meet some of the scientists behind the project.

Nobody really knows how many rats inhabit the South Atlantic island, but it could be millions and they have had a devastating impact on local seabird populations.

Rats eat the chicks of ground-nesting seabirds. They take the chicks alive, some of them several times their size such as albatrosses, or petrels.

Rat eradication has been tried on other islands around the world, notably off New Zealand and Australia, but nothing on the scale being attempted in South Georgia Ordinarily, such a campaign would be impossible; such is the size of the landmass and the number of rats present. But the 100 mile-long, sub- Antarctic island is marked by numerous glaciers that divide up the territory into convenient killing zones that can be cleared one by one.

The rats cannot cross the ice and so conservationists can be sure rodents from neighbouring zones will not re-infest baited areas later.

Some 50 tonnes of rodenticide was dropped on the island by helicopters in March. The helicopter pilots used GPS systems which guided them up and down the breadth of the zones so not a single patch was missed.

The drop represented the first phase in the project, and covered a mere 13 per cent of the rat-infested land area of South Georgia.

Nonetheless, the South Georgia Heritage Trust says it has been hugely encouraged by the results. It claims 100 per cent success in the area baited.

My visit to the island in 2007 was one of the most breathtaking of my career as a wildlife artist.

I landed at Salisbury Plain, host to the world’s largest King Penguin colony. There are 200,000 birds there, and nearby St Andrew’s Bay hosts some 100,000. These magnificent birds are, at least, abundant.

In fact, I could barely cross the beach at St Andrew’s Bay without tripping over a penguin or seal, and, in fact, I actually witnessed a moment of ‘beach rage’ on the overcrowded sands. I saw a king penguin slap an elephant seal with his flipper as he tried to get past it to the water’s edge.

It was quite an astounding moment. The penguin lashed out in irritation as it tried to pick its way through the crowded beach.

But it quickly realised its mistake when the half-tonne elephant seal roared back at it. And, realising it had picked on someone several times its size, the penguin slunk off to take the long way round.

But despite the crowds on the beaches, these populations are as nothing compared to the days before industrial sealers and whalers used the British protectorate as a base for their ships and processing plants.

And some species have plunged into serious decline. The South Georgia Heritage Trust is particularly concerned about the South Georgia Pipit, the most southerly songbird on the planet; and the South Georgia Pintail, a duck species found only on South Georgia Inevitably, the programme has involved some collateral damage in the form of birds and other wildlife also consuming the rat bait. But the shape, colour and size of pellets used have been carefully designed to minimise accidental deaths.

These losses have to be set against the benefits to nesting populations that will accrue in the years ahead and I for one shall be supporting the plan as it enters its second phase.

• Wildlife artist Robert Fuller’s gallery in Thixendale is open every day until Christmas Eve, 11am- 4.30pm.

• To find out more about the rat eradication programme on South Georgia see www.sght.org