‘It’s a monster task’: can culling ferrets and rats save one of the UK’s largest seabird colonies?

Puffins, Manx shearwaters and kittiwakes on Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland have been dying. Now islanders and experts think they have the solution

The dramatic sea cliffs, crags and stacks of Rathlin Island, county Antrim, rise more than 200 metres above the Atlantic Ocean and host one of the UK's largest seabird colonies, including hundreds of endangered puffins, attracting up to 20,000 birders and tourists a year.

On a spectacularly sunny day in September, the cliff faces are devoid of birds, with the puffins already having made their annual migration to spend the winter months at sea. Instead, Rathlin's cliffs are dotted with roped-up figures in harnesses and bulging rucksacks, directed from above by a Scottish mountaineer, via a walkie-talkie.