4 Email Privacy Tools to Keep Your Email Secure By KeriLynn Engel, Who Is Hosting This, 4 May 2016.
What’s the worst that could happen if someone gains access to your email account?
You may think not much - maybe a few spam emails will be sent from your account, but once you change your password, it’ll be over, right?
Actually, your email account is probably the worst online account that can be hacked. Once someone gains access to your email account, it’s an easy enough process to use your email to reset your passwords to any other account on the web, from social media profiles to bank accounts.
And hackers and thieves aren’t the only ones trying to break into your personal messages.
In 1986, the US government passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Among other things, it defined email stored on a server for more than 180 days “abandoned.” Thus, all law enforcement agencies had to do to access it was provide a written statement saying that it was necessary for an investigation. This was before most people had ever heard of email. And this is still the law three decades later.
But this may change. In late April 2016, the House of Representatives voted 419-0 for the Email Privacy Act, which would require that the government get a warrant before accessing Americans’ email. But even if it becomes law, there are still many other concerns.
If you’ve ever read your personal email at work (And let’s be honest, who hasn’t?) chances are your employer could be snooping around in your inbox right along with you. Do you really want to risk your boss finding out about your new job search, your medical history, or your opinions of their management style?
Your email provider may also access your emails under certain circumstances and share them with authorities.
Having a strong unique password is an important first step, but it may not be enough to keep your email completely safe from spying.
If you’re serious about keeping your private communications safe, check out the four email privacy tools we’ve profiled below. They’ll help you to secure your email using features like encryption, anonymity, auto self-destruction, and more. Some of them will work with your existing email accounts, while others will require the setup of a new email address.
No matter which tool you choose, you’ll be ahead of the crowd when it comes to email privacy.
7 Common Smart Home Myths That Simply Aren’t True By Joel Lee, Make Use Of, 5 May 2016.
We’re truly living in the future now, and the advent of the smart home is only one of many developments propelling us forward. Unfortunately, because smart homes are new territory, many folks have misconceptions about what they are and why they exist.
For those who don’t know, a smart home is just a regular home that incorporates devices that have some level of connectivity. For example, thermostats that you can control with your smartphone or lights that shut off when you walk away from them.
These devices are called smart home products, but they’re no different than most other gadgets - and that’s only one of the many misconceptions that people have. Let’s clear up a few others!
1. “Smart Homes Are Just Gimmicks”
Any time there’s buzz around a new technology, it’s good to be skeptical. It’s good to show a bit of restraint and caution, mainly because so many interesting trends never actually amount to anything. They remain nothing more than gimmicks
But just because some smart home products are worthless doesn’t mean all of them are. In fact, a lot of them are intensely practical and well worth the investment.
Not to mention that you can integrate many devices with IFTTT, which opens up thousands of additional possibilities for improving day-to-day life. Remember when smartphones were gimmicks? Smart homes are on the same path.
2. “Smart Homes Are Too Expensive”
At face value, a lot of the smart home products that have come out over the past few years have some steep price tags. I mean, getting started with Philips Hue lights can cost US$200 while a Belkin WeMo smart plug can cost about US$50 per plug. [Nest Learning Thermostat, 2nd Generation, Works with Alexa at Amazon.com]
This obviously isn’t cheap - and nobody ever said that smart homes would be cheap. But if you think about it, it’s actually NOT that expensive, relatively speaking.
Not long ago, we explored how much a smart home would actually cost to implement if you only focused on the most practical items and stayed mindful of a budget. What did we find? Just over US$1,000 for a full setup, up to US$4,000 if you splurged for luxury options.
[Dropcam Pro Wi-Fi Wireless Video Monitoring Security Camera at Amazon.com]
There are plenty of affordable smart home options out there. You just have to be smart about which ones you need. To compare, new windows can cost over US$500 each and a bathroom remodel can easily cross the US$10,000 threshold.
The phrase “smart home” might conjure up images of complex panels and circuitry, all requiring a healthy level of expertise to even start. As it turns out, most smart home products are way easier than you’d expect.
Yes, certain smart home products may involve some technical proficiency - such as the Nest Thermostat, which needs to be hooked up to your climate control system - but most other products are as easy as plug-and-play. That is not an exaggeration.
On the opposite side of the aisle from skeptics, we have the fanatics - those who have discovered the greatness of the smart home and now endeavor to convert everyone else to join them. None of this is malicious, but it can be misguided.
The truth is that while smart home products can be amazingly useful, not everyone actually needs them.
For example, it makes more sense to smarten up your residence when its a house that you personally own. If you’re renting an apartment or condo, hooking up a Nest Thermostat could violate your lease. It’s also a nuisance to undo everything when you move out.
Bottom line: If you find a smart home product that you think might come in handy, go for it. If you look around but nothing suits your fancy, then forget about it. In the end, if you don’t need a smart home, then why force it?
5. “Smart Homes Make You Safe”
Smart security devices are growing in popularity, and if you haven’t seen one with your own eyes yet, just give it another year or two. This is one trend that’s brewing up a storm and is set to explode soon.
But for the skeptic, one question sits at the forefront: do smart security devices actually improve home safety?
And the answer is…it depends, but in most cases, not really.
But a lot of these methods can be done in non-smart ways, and some of them don’t actually increase security - they just offer peace of mind and the illusion of safety, which can still be worthwhile. Ultimately though, no smart home security system is foolproof.
6. “Smart Homes Have No Privacy”
A lot of folks who are against smart homes often claim that smart home products can compromise your privacy. And you know what? Technically, they aren’t wrong.
But just because some smart home products can violate privacy doesn’t mean that all of them do. Or in other words, it’s possible to smarten up your home using only products that preserve your privacy.
As long as you avoid anything with a camera or microphone, you should be good to go. Of all the ways your privacy can be tracked, video and audio records are indeed the worst. But how much harm can a smart thermostat, smart sprinkler, or smart light bulb really do?
Smart home technology is exciting. As we’ve explored time and time again, a lot of interesting things can be done with it - and while some of the products coming out are silly or ephemeral, many of them are productive and helpful.
But smart homes are far from becoming mainstream. We explained up above how these products actually aren’t that difficult to set up and incorporate, but they aren’t a walk in the park either.
The truth is that the smart home industry is still young. Very young. Sure, the idea of home automation has been around since the 1980s - perhaps earlier - but these consumer-ready products haven’t even been around for five years yet.
The industry has a lot of growing pains left to go through, such as the struggle to agree upon a single standard rather than flooding the market with dozens of protocols. It’s nice to have so many smart home hubs to choose from, but it’s also overwhelming and unnecessary.
Do You Have a Smart Home?
We’re fully aware that the smart home industry is ever-evolving, which means some of these myths and misconceptions may no longer apply next year, next month, or even next week. But this is the state of the smart home as of this writing.
Hopefully we were able to clear up any confusion or questions you may have had.
10 Bizarre Villages Where Rare Genes Are The Norm By Xavier Selman, Listverse, 7 May 2016.
For many of us, we are born and we live “normal” - that is, without any genetic deformities or conditions that would render us different. But as we all know, some people are born with genetic defects or develop conditions that make them different from the rest of the world. Here are 10 villages in which those differences are sometimes the norm.
10. Araras: The Brazilian Village That Can’t Handle The Sun
Brazil is known for its sun-loving, beach party-going people. But in one remote, midwestern Brazilian village known as Araras, a large group of the population suffers from a condition that causes their skin to melt away when touched by the sun.
At an incidence rate of 1 in 40 people developing the disease known as xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) (as compared to 1 in 1 million in the US), Araras has 20 out of 800 residents who have XP, making it the largest population of XP sufferers in the world at a statistically improbable rate.
Experts claim that the exorbitantly high incidence rate is caused by the fact that the settling families of Araras all possessed the defective gene that caused this disease. But it only became clearer as those families intermarried and interbred.
The worst part is that Araras is a farming community. With such a high rate of residents unable to continue farming because of their skin developing blisters, tumors, and boils when exposed to sunlight, there has been a heavy toll on farming production. Many residents have been left struggling to find a new form of livelihood.
9. Kalachi and Krasnogorsk: The Kazakhstani Villages Where Everyone Passes Out
In March 2013, almost one-quarter of the residents of two Kazakhstani villages, Kalachi and Krasnogorsk, started falling asleep out of the blue. In this pair of small, dusty settlements on the outskirts of the Kazakh Steppe, some residents were reported to pass into unconsciousness for upwards of several days at a time.
They’d pass out in the middle of the day while walking or working and wake up to headaches, memory loss, fatigue, and overall weakness - all the downsides of a hangover without the pleasure of overdrinking the night before. All demographics in the villages were affected, from children to senior citizens to cats and dogs. Some children claimed that they had nightmares of winged horses and snakes and worms eating their hands.
For nearly two years, doctors had no idea what was causing the phenomenon. Some attributed the effects to the consumption of counterfeit vodka - because what else could it be in a town full of Russian ancestry? One somnologist claimed that they were experiencing mass psychosis similar to the Bin Ladin itch.
But finally in 2015, after analyzing the medical results of all residents, researchers found that the random bouts of sleep were caused by high levels of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons floating in the air. They came from the hastily closed Soviet uranium mines nearby, leading to lower levels of oxygen in the air.
In the small village of Wewelsfleth in northwestern Germany, a tiny population of 1,500 Germans calls it home. But one thing makes this average village stand out: In almost every single household lives a cancer victim. Statistically, residents of Wewelsfleth have a 50 percent greater chance of developing cancer than everyone else - for reasons that no one can figure out.
Some residents put the blame on the three nearby nuclear power plants, with one of them standing in the direction that the wind blows. Unfortunately, when the nearby University of Lubeck conducted a study on it - including other possible causes such as the toxic spray paints once used at the neighboring shipyard, asbestos, and pesticides used in farming - they found no evidence that could lead to a certain single cause.
It’s also possible that the residents of Wewelsfleth are suffering from the “screening effect”: Since they are more afraid of developing cancer, they are more likely to all get themselves tested for it, thus explaining why so many of them have found they have cancer. Either way, when around 142 cancer cases exist in a village of 1,500 residents, it doesn’t take a genius to see that something’s different.
7. Hogewey: Dementia Village
Instead of throwing their dementia-afflicted elderly in a nursing home that feels more like a living-person cemetery, a group of health-care workers in Amsterdam decided to create an entire village where dementia patients could live out the rest of their lives in normal conditions.
Meet Hogewey, the village where everyone is either a dementia patient but doesn’t know it or a health-care worker acting out a village role by working at the village salon, grocery store, restaurant, or movie theater.
Family members and friends of the patients are free to visit as often as they like. With less hands-on care and more freedom for the patients, it actually costs less for them to send their dementia-afflicted grandfather or grandmother to the village than to send them to a regular care facility.
A wall surrounds the village (Shutter Island, anyone?), and if anyone accidentally starts wandering toward one of the doors, a staff member comes and suggests that they try another route.
6. Yangsi: Village Of The Dwarfs
Yangsi, a remote village in China’s Sichuan Province, has earned the unusual moniker of “Dwarf Village.” Over the last century, Yangsi has had a highly disproportionate number of residents affected by stunted growth, with about 40 percent of its population (36 of its 80 residents) standing shorter than 120 centimeters (4′). Reports of this strange phenomenon date back to 1911, with an English scientist in 1947 claiming that he had seen hundreds of dwarfs living in the remote valley of Yangsi.
Usually, a person only has a 1 in 20,000 chance of having stunted growth, meaning that the number of dwarfs in Yangsi is almost statistically impossible. Though no one knows why this is, several theories have been brought up and debunked.
One suggested a high concentration of mercury in the soil, which hasn’t been proven. Another theory claims that it’s the bad feng shui of evil spirits in the area for not having buried their ancestors properly.
Yet another theory - better described as a legend - is that one day, a long time ago, a man named Wang found a black turtle with strange feet. When everyone else suggested that he let it go, he decided to cook it and eat it, thus cursing the village forever. Thankfully, the youngest generation of Yangsi doesn’t seem to fall under this supposed curse.
5. Ikaria: The Island Where Everyone Lives Long
In the US, the average American lives to age 79. But on the Greek island of Ikaria, one in three residents lives to age 90, with others reaching their centenarian years. Named after the boy who flew too close to the Sun, Ikaria can probably thank the lesson of Icarus as one of the reasons for their unusually long lives: Residents of Ikaria are disconnected from the rest of the world and find solace in afternoon naps and emphasizing the concept of happiness over sadness and stress. (Is it a surprise that they’re Greek?)
Another possible reason for their long lives is their diet. Still almost entirely removed from the Westernized world, their diet has stayed consistent in a world of refined sugars and fast-food joints, with a focus on beans, local vegetables that contain 10 times more antioxidants than red wine, potatoes, goat’s milk, and not too much meat or sugar.
Ikaria is known as one of the world’s “Blue Zones,” areas where people live longer than the rest of the world. And not only do they live longer, but they live healthier, with most of their deaths happening naturally rather than through abrupt illnesses or outside diseases.
4. Velikaya Kopanya: ‘Land Of The Twins’
In Western Ukraine, the village of Velikaya Kopanya has earned itself the name “Land of the Twins” for the record-breaking percentage of twins in its population, with 61 pairs of twins out of 4,000 residents. And it’s not a new phenomenon. The common occurrence of twins in the village has been happening for at least three generations, as birth records earlier than that no longer exist.
While no one knows exactly what’s causing the unusually high number of twins, it’s been found that not only is it occurring in humans but also in cows, with cows giving birth to twin calves at an unusually high rate as well. Many speculate that it’s the local well giving them their twin-birthing powers.
One local story tells of a woman who lived in a town over 160 kilometers (100 mi) away who couldn’t give birth. When she traveled to Velikaya Kopanya to drink from their well, she got pregnant within a few months and gave birth to a set of twins.
With two or three sets of twins being born every year, locals from other towns have come in and started courting their girls, hoping to catch some of the magic twin gene.
3. Bengkala: The Village Where Everyone Speaks Sign Language
In the US, around 2 or 3 out of every 1,000 births will be a deaf or partly deaf child. In Bengkala, a small village in northern Indonesia, 42 of its 3,000 residents have been deaf since birth. This unusually high rate of deafness (5 times higher than the rest of the world) is attributed to a geographically centric recessive gene called DFNB3, which the village has had for over seven generations.
Deafness is so common in Bengkala that, unlike in the rest of the world, it’s no longer seen as a detriment. Instead, the deaf, or kolok, are treated the same as everyone else. Kolok children learn in school beside hearing children, and everyone knows the ancient local sign language known as kato kolok.
Recessive gene aside, locals believe that deafness is a curse from a certain legend in which two people with magical powers cursed each other with deafness and that the name of their village, Bengkala, means “a place for someone to hide.” Kolok also form their own community in the village, and residents think of the kolok as physically strong, more resilient, honest, and loyal.
Kolok guards are also known for coming to work earlier than hearing guards, and kolok guards are stricter than their hearing counterparts, beating criminals for longer and harder because they can’t hear the screams.
2. Salinas: The Town Of The Late Penises
When most of us are born, the doctor can tell right away whether we’re a boy or a girl by looking between our legs. But in the small, remote village of Salinas in the Dominican Republic, some boys don’t grow their penises until they reach puberty, with their families believing them to be and raising them as girls until their sudden genital sprouting.
The condition is a rare genetic disorder caused by a missing enzyme. It results in a late surge of testosterone that only comes at the age of puberty, which forms their penis at the same time as the deepening of their voice.
In Salinas, these boys are known as guevedoces, translated as “penis at 12.” They happen as regularly as every 1 out of 90 boys, with them growing up with less facial hair and smaller prostate glands.
They were only “medically discovered” in 1970, but in Salinas, it’s been happening for as long as anyone can remember. Now they’re medically referred to as pseudohermaphrodites, which is thankfully not as bad as today’s resurgence among youth of pseudophilosophicals.
1. Antioquia: The Village Where The Elderly Care For Their Children’s Alzheimer’s
In most of the world, it’s the children who take care of their parents when their minds sadly begin to regress into diseases like Alzheimer’s. But in one mountainous village in northwestern Colombia, people do the opposite.
In the small village of Antioquia, over 5,000 people are afflicted with early-onset Alzheimer’s, making it the world’s largest population of Alzheimer’s sufferers. This is due to many centuries of inbreeding in the village, resulting in the consistent passing down of a defective gene that causes what is known as the “paisa” mutation. The mutation is aptly named after the residents of that area who are known as Paisas.
This congregation of Alzheimer’s sufferers has led to multiple cases where elderly parents in their seventies and eighties are forced to take care of their children, who are in their forties, fifties, and sixties. The children developed Alzheimer’s at a young age, almost the reverse of every other place in the world.
Researchers in the area use the village as a testing ground for Alzheimer’s. One researcher studied brains at his local “brain bank,” where families donate the brains of their late Alzheimer’s-afflicted relatives to aid in the research of this disease. Unfortunately, no headway other than preventative treatment has been made.
Top image: Sunset at Ikaria island, Greece. Credit: Micanon/Wikimedia Commons.
10 Environmentally Conscious Actions That Backfired In Strange Ways By Sam Derwin, Listverse, 7 May 2016.
Environmentally conscious behaviors from humans usually help the environment, or so logic would tell you. While this can be the case, some actions done with the best of intentions for the environment backfire in strange and unexpected ways.
10. Artificial Reef Pollutes Ocean
In 1972, it seemed like it would be a great idea when 700,000 old tires were dropped off the coast of southern Florida in an effort to create an artificial reef. The theory was that the bundled-up tires would attract fish and serve as a base for coral growth. However, the tires broke apart and started killing off established coral reefs, as well as cluttering up the ocean. The underwater landscape full of tires has been shocking divers for decades.
A cleanup effort started in 2007, and divers managed to remove 62,000 tires from the ocean floor. The project has since been stalled because the divers were needed to clean up natural disasters elsewhere, including from the Haiti earthquake. Although Florida planned to remove a further 90,000 tires, that would still leave more than 500,000 tires on the ocean floor. As the cleanup slowly continues, the tires are becoming harder to remove as they have spread away from their initial bundles.
When the Fukishima disaster occurred in 2011, anti-nuclear sentiment spiked in many countries, including Germany. German politicians scrambled to respond to public sentiment and promised a nuclear-free Germany by 2022. The result has been, paradoxically, that carbon emissions from Germany have spiked. Coal is the only source reliable enough to replace nuclear power on a large scale in the medium term, with 44 percent of Germany’s power coming from coal-fired power plants in 2014.
Germany has been unable to transition away from coal. This is not just due to the power demands of its industries, but also because of a powerful coal lobby. New coal-fired power plants are being built in Germany, and Germans are being slugged with higher electricity prices to support renewable energy under Germany’s current “Energiewende” policy.
8. Rat Problem Replaced By Rabbit Problem
In the early 2000’s, the Scottish island of Canna spent more than £500,000 getting rid of their rat infestation. With almost 10,000 rats on the small, seven-kilometer-long (4.5 mi) island, the island’s population of local birds was being decimated. Exterminators were brought in from New Zealand, and thousands of traps were planted by hand around the island. In 2008, after two years of waiting and observation, the entire island was declared rat-free.
But with the rats now gone, the rabbit population has exploded. Thousands of rabbits are now burrowing so much that they are destroying ancient archaeological artifacts and threatening people’s crops. The rabbits had been kept in check by the rat infestation, but now the only predators they have are sea eagles, which don’t kill many of them. The inhabitants of the island have responded by turning the rabbits they catch into food, but they simply can’t eat enough to solve the infestation issue.
7. Anti-Poaching Creates A Poaching Problem
On March 6, 1989, a massive anti-poaching raid was launched in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico involving hundreds of ATF officers supported by aircraft. Sweeping through towns straddling the state borders in the San Luis Valley, law enforcement officials arrested hundreds of people and charged them with illegal poaching. This was the end result of a two-and-a-half-year-long sting operation to identify poachers in the region. Unfortunately, that sting operation actually created the poaching problem in the first place.
The sting played out like this: A US Federal agent posing as a taxidermist became friendly with San Luis locals and spread the word that he was interested in the pelts of animals that could be poached in the valley. Being one of the poorest areas in the United States, locals jumped on the opportunity to make money, especially when the agent promised to pay up to US$300 for an eagle and US$200 for an elk. One man was charged with counts of poaching multiple bald eagles, but poaching just one bald eagle would have been enough to put the man in jail. There was no need for the operation to have run for as long as it had - over 850 animals were killed before the massive raid.
6. Protecting Endangered Meadows Made People Destroy More
English grasslands are arguably an English icon and have inspired generations of artists and writers. Unfortunately, the pastures and meadows that characterize English grasslands are in a seemingly terminal decline. This is compounded by the fact that many grasslands are no longer protected as local wildlife sites because the species that used to live there are now gone. The situation has been caused by both new development and changes in agricultural practice, as well as simple neglect. Budget cuts affecting the United Kingdom wildlife watchdog have not helped either.
The result is that 98 percent of meadows have been lost to farming as of 2014. The EU announced in 2012 that it wanted to protect English grasslands. However, instead of halting the decline of the grasslands, the opposite happened. Farmers started deliberately destroying their meadows before any EU rules could come into effect. The number of applications by farmers to plow grasslands doubled that same year.
5. LED Traffic Lights Cause Car Crashes
Many towns across the United States have switched from incandescent light bulbs in traffic signs to LEDs. LEDs typically last longer, are more energy efficient, and are brighter. This would seem to be a perfect combination for a traffic light, except for one thing - LEDs don’t give off heat. When there was heavy snow in the winter, snow buildup on the traffic lights caused fatal car crashes because snow had built up and obscured the traffic light.
Installing heaters on the traffic lights would have solved the problem, but would have also wiped out a significant proportion of the savings from switching to LEDs in the first place. Small towns resorted to using long sticks to knock snow off the LEDs and later installed expensive shields to keep snow from building up on the lights. Despite the precautions, accidents continue to happen...and people continue to lose their lives.
4. Energy-Efficient Windows Burn Things
Low emissivity, or low-e, windows are coated with a layer of metal oxide. This makes them more energy efficient than ordinary windows because they reflect sunlight and are better able to retain energy. These types of windows are quite popular, and some local jurisdictions have made them mandatory for new buildings. But they have an unexpected drawback - they are so reflective that they can focus sunlight and melt things.
The exteriors of homes across the streets are being melted. Cars parked in the street have had their side-view mirrors melted. Even garbage cans pay the price. Some hotel guests in Las Vegas have also been burned by the reflection from low-e windows. The problem is now endemic in the United States. There is very little talk of any kind of solution, and it’s leaving homeowners with little recourse when their houses’ exteriors are melted out of shape. In response to the widespread damage, manufacturers have gone so far as to add exceptions to warranties for damage caused by window reflections.
3. Mining Company Pours Concrete Into A Stream
Coal mining in Australia’s outback has caused massive cracks in natural rock formations and subsidence of the ground in some places. In 2012, the mining company Glencore Xstrata attempted to repair some of the cracks by laying concrete over them to stop the subsidence. One attempt used 12 concrete trucks’ worth of grout to repair a crack in a ridge, a plan which backfired spectacularly. The contractors didn’t realize that the concrete they were pouring in was spewing right out of the bottom of the ridge and into a creek. The result was that nearly 400 meters (1,300 ft) of the creek was cemented over and destroyed.
In 2015, three years after the damage had been done, Glencore Xstrata was finally convicted of two breaches of environmental law - with a maximum fine of $2.1 million AUD. However, the company was fined a mere $120,000 AUD, a slap on the wrist.
2. Waterless Urinals Caused Urine Leaks
In 2010, Chicago installed waterless urinals in their city hall to reduce water usage. But they soon had to rip out the waterless urinals and reinstall flush ones at a considerable cost. The urine had corroded the copper pipes that drained the urinals and caused urine to accumulate behind the wall of the bathroom. Noxious odors had wafted up into the city council chambers. It didn’t help that people would pour other fluids, such as coffee, down the urinals as well.
When the waterless urinals were first installed in bathrooms, janitors didn’t know how to maintain them or that they required different cleaning mechanisms from flush urinals. They also didn’t know that, in certain designs, the cartridges inside them needed to be changed regularly. With increased awareness of the maintenance needed for waterless urinals, along with hybrid urinals that flush small amounts of water occasionally, waterless urinals are a lot more common now.
1. Meddling With Macquarie Island
Macquarie Island, situated near Antarctica, has suffered a catastrophic ecological decline since humans first visited it in 1810. The introduction of rats, cats, and finally rabbits drove two local species to extinction and started destroying local vegetation. With the rabbit population soaring, a disease that affected rabbits was introduced in the 1970s to cull the rabbit population. The result was that the cat population ate more of the local wildlife. Conservationists shot all the cats, which resulted in the rabbit population exploding again. This further increased the destruction of local vegetation, which had just started to recover - 40 percent of the island was stripped of vegetation by the expanding rabbit population.
In 2007, a massive project was initiated to eradicate rats and rabbits from the island and continued for seven years. In 2014, the island was finally declared rat and rabbit free when none had been seen in the previous three years.
