July and August 2010 conservation highlights

2^nd November 2010

In the field

Madagascar

A new species of mongoose has been described called Durrell’s vontsina Salanoia durrelli. This species is known from a couple of individuals found by our team at Lake Alaotra and is likely to have one of the smallest geographic ranges of any carnivore A paper describing the species will be published in Systematics and Biodiversity imminently.
Following the seizure of illegally smuggled ploughshare and radiated tortoises in Kuala Lumpur in June, two people were prosecuted and the tortoises will be repatriated back to Madagascar, with the ploughshares being brought to Durrell’s Madagascar Programme.

Our entire programme team - now 40 staff - gathered at Ankarafantsika National Park to develop their plans for 2011, which is 25th anniversary year of Durrell’s involvement in the country. Our focus for next year will be to completion of protected areas in our core programme regions, evaluation of our community conservation model and to establish the breeding centre for the Madagascar pochard.

Juliette Velosoa and Richard Lewis travelled to the US, with support from Behler Chelonian Centre (BCC), for the Turtle Survival Alliance conference. Juliette gave a talk on Rere and Richard on Angonoka. Richard also visited BCC chelonian breeding facility in California. Durrell is working with BCC on a project to monitor Baly Bay National Park for tortoise poachers, and they recently supported the purchase of a boat to increase coastal patrols.

Mauritius

In July a 16 day mission was conducted to Flat Island to translocate 390 skinks to Gunner’s Quoin (300) and Gabriel Island (90), following the invasion of musk shrew onto Flat Island. The translocation was the first to be conducted exclusively by Mauritian staff from the MWF and NPCS. The skills attained by the Mauritian staff to complete the translocation is a direct result of Durrell’s presence and support within Mauritius through the Darwin Initiative project (2006-2009) and now the Harcroft Foundation.

The breeding season for the skinks and geckos has started and the animals released onto Ile aux Aigrettes have been monitored closely. So far indications are positive that animals are persisting well, and five observations of geckos breeding have been made.

Preparations for the translocation of tortoises to Round Island continue; disease screening results for the blood smears and faecal samples have been returned to MWF, no blood parasites were detected, but the tortoises will need to be de-wormed prior to translocation.

St Lucia

Capture of alien green iguanas continues and we are now ending the breeding season. Dispersal of juveniles has been lower that initially thought, which is positive. Captures in August were much lower.
Durrell and Forestry have also been investigating the use of tracker dogs to locate alien iguanas. A company in the USA (PackLeader) will hire trained dogs and trainers (to train local handlers) and, having been provided with detailed background on the project, believe they can assist. This is being budgeted for year 2 of the GEF/UNEP IAS project and we will target the nesting season (confirmed this year as Feb-May)

Surveys to find whiptails on the offshore islands began again. Goats were found again on Dennery Island, which is not good. Signs have been developed under another project, for each of the four islands (see below).

Montserrat

First results from the analysis of swabs from Roaches show that chytrid is present in the area. This is a set back for the project, which was hoping (possibly against expectation) that the area would be free from the disease. The Mountain Chicken Recovery Programme team is now planning how to respond to this, especially in relation to a planned release of frogs this year.
The Montserrat Darwin project has been initiated and recruitment for the project coordinator has started with 40 applicants from around the world. Project Steering Committee members have been identified in Montserrat and options for the fates of captive-bred mountain chicken froglets have been circulated for comments.

Hispaniola

The Last Survivors in Dominican Republic (www.lastsurvivors.org) project has been sampling new areas in Parque Jaragua and Parque del Este to look for solenodon and hutia signs. There could be some interesting evidence of an unusual form of hutia in the region, which is larger and has brown and white fur. Joe and his team found a recently dead animal, so we have DNA and a skeleton on which to do the analysis to investigate whether this really is something different.
In August, Dr Rebecca Coe, Education Officer with ZSL, visited together with the team has given talks to three schools (7 classes), three higher education institutes (2 universities and 1 polytechnic) and zoo staff. A total of 538 people attended the talks.

The Darwin-Initiative funded project to save the Massif de la Hotte’s (Haiti) globally threatened species is now gearing up. Richard Young is collaborating with BirdLife and ZSL to start the GIS and mapping work and to plan the first phase of field surveys of threatened amphibians and mammals by local partners.

Galapagos

The team carried out a two week survey of the core area and release site for mangrove finches. Unfortunately the team also found fishermen illegally camping at Bahia Urbina where they were burning mangrove wood. This has been a fishing camp in the past, but access to it has been banned by Galapagos National Park (GNP). GNP were informed and the fishermen were moved.

At Playa Tortuga Negra (one of the core finch areas), more finches were seen including a number of juveniles which shows that breeding has been successful and the season was long this year, both of which are encouraging signs. The team did not see any of the translocated birds. Two old nests were found, one of which contain 43 pupae of the parasitic Philornis fly and the desiccated bodies of two chicks of about fledging age.

Assam

The 21 babies in seven surviving litters are growing satisfactorily. Besides mother’s milk and complimentary food, they actively forage with mother.

Members of our project villages were engaged in improving the drainage system in the Park boundary under the aegis of a government income generation scheme - National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

Self-help groups (SHGs) set up through the restoration project as a means of supporting community development, have been busy growing cash crops (e.g. tumeric) and producing woven products.

No fieldwork has been undertaken during this period due to the storm weather.

Training

In July we ran the three week Endangered Species Recovery course which was a great success, though numbers were lower than anticipated.  Plans are now underway to revise the course and modularise it so people can come for “bitesize” portions of the course in 2011. 

On August the 1st we officially opened the Les Noyers Hostel for tourists and organised groups, to make better use of the facilities when we are not running courses.  More than 120 nights accommodation were taken up by tourists between August and September giving us a good start to this new revenue generator for Durrell. 

In August we secured £30,000 from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to run our Amphibian Conservation Husbandry course and conservation priority-setting workshop in Argentina in 2011.  This is a great start to Durrell’s 2011 plans to put into practice our fledgling Amphibian Conservation Strategy, bringing together training, the wildlife park and the skills of our field programmes. 

Wildlife Park

Triplets were born to one of our critically endangered pied tamarins. One did not survive but the remaining two were removed for hand-rearing. The progress of this pregnancy and subsequent rearing is being filmed extensively by the BBC for a forthcoming TV series.

Led by Jonathan Stark, Gorilla Keeper, we have launched our Gorilla Guardian Appeal, which can been seen near the gorilla exhibit. Funds collected here will go to a scholarship to train conservationists and rangers working to protect gorillas in their native forests to take part in our training courses on an annual basis. This we believe is the most effective way we can support gorilla conservation on the ground in Central Africa.

The red-billed choughs are now on display. The former bat house was completely renovated with lots of help from local corporate and community partners. These birds are flagships for our major new coastland restoration project in Jersey in collaboration with the States of Jersey and the National Trust for Jersey.

Mountain chicken breeding has been very successful this year – about 120 froglets to date. This has created a logistical problem in how to accommodate these numbers. They will be temporarily housed in converted interior of old bat house until November when animals will then hopefully be reintroduced to Montserrat.
 

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