Hawadax Island, Alaska

Hawadax Island (Aleut: Hawadax) is an island in the Rat Islands archipelago of the western Aleutian Islands in the U.S. state of Alaska. The island was formerly known as Rat Island until May 2012 when it was renamed Hawadax Island, which is an Aleut name meaning "entry" and "welcome". The island has a land area of 10.3126 sq mi (26.7095 km²) and no permanent population. It is within the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. It is 9.3 miles (15 km) in length and 3.1 miles (5 km) in width.

The former name is the English translation of the name given to the islands by Captain Fyodor Petrovich Litke in 1827 when he visited the Aleutian Islands on a voyage around the world.

The Rat Islands are very earthquake-prone as they are on the boundary of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. In 1965, there was a major earthquake with the magnitude 8.7 in the Rat Islands.

The island was heavily infested with brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), which are considered a nuisance invasive species due to their negative impact on the population of ground-nesting wild birds.

The rats arrived on the island before 1780 due to a Japanese shipwreck. Since then, the rats had a devastating effect on local seabirds that have no natural defenses against the rats. Invasive rats are also present on 16 other islands in the Aleutian chain.

In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which manages the refuge, was formulating plans to eradicate the rats, without negatively affecting other species. Scientists considered the island a test case for other eradications in less isolated environments. The eradication plan is modelled on a successful one to eliminate the Arctic fox from various Aleutian islands, where they were deliberately introduced for breeding.

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