December 2010 conservation highlights

31^st January 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.

Madagascar and the Comoros - Islands at Risk

Madagascar

Ploughshare tortoise – 16 of the 37 eggs incubated at Ampijoroa have hatched so far. In the field further signs of mating efforts have been seen by our teams, which is positive. Also an illegal shipment of tortoises was seized at the national airport, which included 3 baby ploughshares.

Madagascar pochard – Phoebe Young from WWT started a three month period managing the ducks at Ampijoroa. Efforts to establish a breeding centre for the duck continue, with a house located in Antsohihy to be used as an office and rearing facility and a site in Anjingo to become the breeding facility. Formal applications to use the land at Anjingo were completed.

Side-necked turtles – were surveyed in the Andranomiditra river in Ankaranfantsika NP. A total of 9 adults, 13 sub-adults and 51 juveniles were caught at three locations. A number of native fish were also caught, identified and measured. This area hasn’t surveyed in the past 5 years.

Baly Bay - The new boat was delivered to aid access and patrols along the coast of the Baly Bay National Park. The boat was boat through support from the Turtle Conservancy in the USA, and will be named ‘Ojah’ from the location of their breeding centre in California.

Menabe - Durrell has signed a new contract with WWF to work on mangrove conservation around our field sites in western Madagascar. This will create an important new basis to extend conservation efforts to these areas.

Satellite analysis of the Menabe-Anitmena protected area shows that deforestation has continued, and that its worse in the core protected areas than in the community managed areas. This would indicate that while community led initiatives are working well, pressures have been transferred to government managed areas.

Nosivolo – six micro-projects carried distributing chickens and ducks to 21 families and crop plants to another 20 families. Our team also worked with local doctors on outreach activities to reduce incidence of schistosomiasis, elephantiasis and malaria. We also conducted a public consultation for the establishment of the new protected area for Nosivolo.

Comoros

Development - The new agricultural advisor, Joris Backaert, started in December. Agricultural activities have gone well, with over 500 fields being used for the project. Village trainers have used 20 fields to demonstrate new agricultural techniques and seed varieties to others. The first cow has been placed as a test of the guardianship system for improving field fertility. The poultry farm has finally proved successful in Nindri, with individual models being tested in around 10 houses.

Plant nurseries have been established in two villages to support the future replanting of areas important for watch catchment.

Biodiversity – the wet season surveys have continued with Scop’s owl counts in sites, and surveying for reptiles, butterflies and birds around the development intervention sites to look for a long term effect of this work on biodiversity. Data analysis will start in January.

Mascarene Islands - Islands at Risk

Ile Aux Aigrettes – a total of 49 Guenther’s gecko eggs have been found on the island. Fifteen of the previously located eggs had hatched and one healthy juvenile gecko was located.

HRH Princess Anne visited Ile aux Aigrettes on the 4th Dec where she met the managers and coordinators of each project to learn about the progress made on the island since her last visit. All the reptile team were present and spent approximately 10 minutes talking about the reptile work.

Round Island – Nik supported a 10 day trip to transfer 60 Aldabran giant tortoises to Round Island from Mauritius. Transported in two groups, they are now being held in pens close to the field station to allow them to acclimatise.

Nik and his team also conducted a number of surveys in the palm savannah on Round Island, catching 65 Telfair’s skinks, 34 Guenthers geckos, as getting monitoring data on all reptile species.

Caribbean Islands - Islands at Risk

St Lucia

St Lucia iguana – efforts to contain the invasive green iguana continue, the team is now working with dog trainers who train dogs to find invasive snakes in Guam. Hopefully training can be provided to local dog handlers to use dogs to find the green iguanas.

Saint Lucia whiptail lizards – the team translocated 10 males and 10 females from Maria Major Island to Rat Island, which was hit by severe droughts in 2010. On Rat Island we are trying to establish a population with a mixed lineage from both Maria Major and Maria Minor. The Maria Minor population is very small through, at around 30 individuals. Encounter rates on Rat Island have been the high and the island will now be monitored monthly.

Invasive alert – Cuban brown anole – the team followed up reports of sightings of this well known invasive species. They found 10 individuals near shipments of timber, which may suggest their method of entry to St Lucia. Given that the endemic St Lucian anole Anolis luciae attains a larger size than this one, we hope that the impacts will not be too great, but this will be monitored.

The Lansan Tree project – thankfully Hurricane Tomas seems to have only caused minor damage to the lansan trees which are the focus of a project to test methods to sustainably harvest the resin (incence).

Fund in memory of Lester Jn. Baptiste - As of the end of December 2010, we reached (and exceeded) our target of raising £1,000 in memory of Lester who was killed in a landslide during Hurricane Tomas at Fond St Jacques. Lester worked with Durrell for a number of years on the iguana and parrot projects. A full obituary is here: http://blog.durrell.org/index.cfm/2010/11/17/In-memoriam-Lester-Jean-Baptiste-1956--2010

Montserrat

Mountain chickens – Sarah and the team completed the rapid surveys of the ghauts to identify a candidate release site for the Jan 2011 releases of captive bred frogs. A target ghaut has been selected based on a number of critieria including topography, distance from habitation, presence of running water etc.

Detailed release plans, biosecurity protocols and monitoring plans have been developed and submitted to partners and IUCN Reintroduction Specialist Group for consultation.

Sarah also initiated an awareness survey in Montserrat to look at people’s attitudes to the species and its conservation before our major activities got underway. We will conduct similar surveys towards the end of the project in three years time.

Dominican Republic

Solenodon – seven new points were surveyed in Parque Jaragua where the team walked over 90km of paths. They made 90 opportunistic sightings of solenodon, but non of hutia.

Pacific Islands - Islands at Risk

Mangrove finch - A 15 day field trip took place from 2-16 December. We visited Bahía Urbina first for six days before moving camp to Playa Tortuga Negra for the remaining nine days.

A six day trip to the release site, Bahia Urbina, failed to find any mangrove finches, although one was found singing last month – this individual flew back to the source population site.

At the source population at Playa Tortuga Negra and Caleta Black, the breeding season has begun – 13 nests were found with 8 being incubated. The nests are all high in trees – and the team climbed to one nest at 11m, but the others are out of reach.

A draft of the Mangrove Finch awareness raising poster has been designed by Alex a CDF media volunteer. The design looks great and require final proof reading and Galápagos National Park approval before printing. We still hope to be able to distribute the poster around Puerto Villamil on Isabela on World Wetlands Day, 2nd February 2011.

Sue Maturin has continued to film aspects of Mangrove Finch ecology (feeding, nesting behaviour) as well as the work of the field team. She plans to make several short films for distribution on websites and to make the footage available to the Project. Both and English and Spanish versions have been filmed.

Galápagos Hawk – Frannie is supporting efforts to protect the endemic hawks on Rabida and Bainbridge Islet. The islands will be poisoned to clear them of rats and there is a risk of secondary poisoning to the hawks. So they will be caught and held in captivity for the sensitive period in January.

Amphibians - Critical Species

Mountain chickens – the Herps team have identified which frogs will be transferred to Montserrat from Jersey and Sweden. Another group of frogs will be transferred to a new facility at Chester Zoo and a third group will go to pilot test a breeding facility being established in Dominica.

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