Rabbit Island: For science no more

Written byAlison McCook

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Last Thursday, owners of Rabbit Island, a linkurl:pristine 36 acre environment;http://www.dkatantarctic.com/RabbitIsland.html off the coast of British Columbia that has taught many budding scientists about natural phenomena, voted to sell the island to the highest bidder. Professor Dennis Kelly of Orange Coast College in California has been taking students to Rabbit Island for years to demonstrate things most collegians only read about in textbooks -- island gigantism in the form of an enormous grasshopper, for instance. "Rabbit Island was really pristine," Kelly told me. But last-minute attempts to raise money from government grants or donations did not come through, and the island now must fall into someone else's hands. "Being given Rabbit Island was like being given the Galapagos. And that's irreplaceable." Kelly said the island was owned by the linkurl:Orange Coast;http://www.orangecoastcollege.edu/about_occ/foundation/ Foundation, which supports the college, and received the island as a donation in 2002. The island linkurl:cost the Foundation;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23277/ roughly $500,000 to keep up, but they're hoping to get between $1.5 and $2 million for the land, Kelly said. "I've put in five years of my life into the island," Kelly noted. "I hate losing, but there's nothing I can do about it now."

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