August 2011 conservation highlights

31^st August 2011

Durrell leads conservation efforts at its wildlife park, through field programmes in priority regions around the world and through the activities of the International Training Centre to save species from extinction. Our Conservation Programme focuses on regions containing highly threatened species and habitats, and is separated into two priority themes:

‘Islands at Risk’
programmes for Madagascar & Comoros, Mascarene Islands, Caribbean Islands, Channel Islands, and Pacific Islands.

‘Critical Species’
programmes for Critically Endangered amphibians, globally threatened primates and threatened birds of South East Asia.
Below is the summary of activities across the programme during the past month.

In August, the IUCN published a book called Species on the Edge of Survival. This “unique guide to 365 of the world’s species on the IUCN’s Red List” includes 14 of Durrell’s target species for which we supplied the species profiles.
 

Islands at Risk - Madagascar and the Comoros

Alaotra – MaVoa completed their field research for bushmeat survey to determine whether there is an impact on the gentle lemurs. In total MaVoa interviewed 750 households around Alaotra. They will send us a report in September.

Baly Bay - 32 of 40 released ploughshares had been found by end of August using our new receiver. Photos and measurements have been taken of all 32. Seven others still do not have transmitters (but have been engraved and microchipped). One animal with transmitter has yet to be re-found this year.

Menabe – Annual dry season surveys of colonial nesting birds and teal in 16 wetlands of Tsiribihina, Manambolo and Soahany took place. Lake Bedo was the most important site in terms of individual abundance, although level of lake quite low.

Ampijoroa – the big news is that we have successfully hatched two artificially incubated ploughshare tortoises. Both are healthy and this is a world first for the species. There are another 9 nine eggs remaining, 6 of which seem viable.
 

Madagascar pochard – construction of the new hatchery at Antsohihy is complete. The water pressure is very low and the water company is due to fix this. But the ducks are scheduled to move from Ampijoroa next month. Progress is also being made with the breeding centre in Anjingo. This is an area of empty land about 45 minutes drive from Antsohihy. Finally permissions and land use rights have been secured and building on this main site can progress.

The Madagascar pochard research team carried out a simultaneous count of all 4 lakes, home to the wild population, and found only 13 males and 7 females on Matsaborimena, and no birds at any of the other three lakes. The team have documented seven broods since June with almost no chicks surviving beyond 3 weeks of age.

Comoros – The ecological team have almost completed all the species mapping work, with maps complete for Anjouan and Grand Comore. They will next complete the maps for Moheli. The maps identify species rich areas and will be used to support the development of protected areas.

Islands at Risk – Mascarene Islands

Mauritius – a meeting was held at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) between all the organisations involved in research in Mauritius. It was an extremely useful and positive meeting that saw both academic and NGO partners developing the strategic direction for research to support conservation in Mauritius.

Ile aux Aigrettes – the main focus of monitoring on IAA this month was a re-assessment of the vegetation cover of the island, which hampered by the weather has proved to be a major undertaking.

Ile Marianne – surveys to find lesser night geckos that were released from Durrell found eight individuals all of which looked to be in good condition.

Islands at Risk – Caribbean Islands

St Lucia iguanas – finding invasive iguanas has been the main focus of work in August. Training using two of the captured iguanas fitted with radio collars has improved the teams ability to detect them, and now they are working to improve capture success – unfortunately its extremely difficult to catch them. The radio-tracked iguanas, also led the team to four iguanas that could be removed, which was a real bonus. This month they have caught three males, three females and six juveniles.
 

Tree climber, Seako, noosing alien iguana on cliff-side

Montserrat Mountain chickens – Sarah-Louise Smith and her team remain busy regularly monitoring the frogs released earlier this year.

The third project steering committee took place and two forestry staff from Dominica came over to take part along with Andrew Cunningham from ZSL. The focus of the meeting was on increasing collaboration with Dominica and developing the research strategy for the species.

Ninon Hives, a wildlife documentary and filmmaker student from France came out to do some filming for her project. She has covered all the field activities that we conduct along with some interviews and background footage of the volcano. She ran a half day Wildlife Photography and Filming workshop which was very well received.

As part of the school holidays and our raising awareness campaign, we conducted a ‘Mountain Chicken Day’ where we took 15 school children between the ages of 6 and 13 out into the forest for half a day to practice radio-tracking and swabbing cane toads. It was also a trial and was very successful.

Dominican Republic - Ros Kennerley, (PhD) student, also completed her first pilot field season radio tracking the Hispaniolan solenodon. Meanwhile, new surveys of Hispaniolan solenodon and hutia have started the northern Dominican mountain ranges, which have already discovered important and unprotected populations of these globally threatened species.

Islands at Risk – Pacific Islands

Floreana mockingbirds – rough seas have hindered Luis’s access to the mockingbirds, but when he has been able to get out, he has continued the ringing programme on Champion and Gardner, and has been identifying potential sites on the main island of Floreana that could be managed for mockingbirds.

Mangrove finches – the main financial support for the project is coming to an end and so during the Overseas Team Meeting, decisions were taken on a way forward for the programme. The tiny population is still very vulnerable and while rats are being controlled, support is needed to continue the programme and expand the highly vulnerable remaining population. A proposal has been submitted to the IUCN SOS fund to support the next phase. Francesca was out with Galapagos NationalPark baiting team to restock all the rat bait around the remaining finch population.

Islands at Risk – Channel Islands

Training and education - The ever-popular ‘Conservation Science School’ course was held, giving teenagers the chance to learn more about the latest issues and techniques in conservation and endangered species recovery. The ITC also hosted a short ‘Facilitation Skills’ course aimed at local teenagers, drawing upon key skills from our annual ‘Facilitation Skills for Conservation Managers’ course.

Training and education - Final preparations were made for two forthcoming courses – the ‘Island Species-led Action’ training course being run in the Dominican Republic next month, and the ‘Captive Care and Conservation Husbandry of Callitrichids and Lemurs’ course running in Jersey in early October.

Critical Species

Pygmy hog – work with communities bordering Manas National Park carried out with Darwin and CEPF funding over the past 5 years is showing positive results. People have been able to recover land that was abandoned due to high levels of conflict with elephants. They are also willing to reduce encroachment into the National Park voluntarily.

In Orang National Park, monitoring the released hogs has become extremely difficult as the rains and tall grass hinder the monitoring teams. Safety also remains an issue, and the teams have had two close encounters with Rhino. Monitoring efforts have now stopped and will resume in late November.

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