June 2010 conservation highlights

23^rd July 2010

In the field

Madagascar
Our team celebrated World Environment Day in most of our field sites with Ampijoroa being the site chosen for national celebrations.

In Lac Alaotra, home of the Alaotran gentle lemur, our team completed the first surveys of the species using a new approach that allows us to get deeper into the marsh. It will hopefully give us a much more accurate estimate of the current population. Unforutnately this also highlighted that illegal marsh cutting still continues, with another 600ha clearing found.

Also a paper published in the Journal of Animal Ecology on the Lac Alaotra gentle lemurs confirms our concerns about the effects of this marsh fragmentation on lemur populations.

Andrea Wallace (our CASE PhD student based at Imperial College) reported the first results from her research on the Lac Alaotra fishery and the potential costs of conservation for local people, which indicates that the Tilapia fishery is collapsing. This s the most important species for local people and these decreases may lead to and increased reliance on marsh-dwelling snakehead - which has serious implications for the conservation of the Alaotran marsh and its species. Results will be fed into the annual planning meeting in Madagascar.

A paper on the role of locally-based monitoring in REDD (3 Durrell co-authors) has now been revised and is in review with the journal Conservation Letters.

In a major development, two shipments of stolen animals from Madagascar including hundreds of radiated tortoises and six ploughshare tortoises were seized in Kuala Lumpur.

Floriot Randrianarimangason has joined the pochard team, having worked with our ploughshare tortoises and rere for many years. He has come over to Jersey to take plart in the Endangered Species Recovery course and to spend time with the Bird Department and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in the UK.

A potential site for the Madagascar pochard breeding site has been identified and various meetings have been held with local and national authorities. Once this location is confirmed building of the dedicated breeding centre will begin.

Mauritius
Many male and female pairs of Guenther’s geckos on Ile aux Aigrettes have been seen using the same locations and some interactions have been observed. This is very promising for the onset of the breeding season, which should commence in September.

The two Guenther’s gecko eggs hatched on the 9th June, 80 days after they were laid. Both juvenile geckos appeared fit and healthy and stayed close to their hatch site for approximately 12 hours before dispersing. This is the first time that the Guenther’s gecko has hatched in the wild outside of Round Island for more than 150 years.

Extensive preparations have been made to translocate orange-tail skinks from Flat Islands (which has now been invaded by shrews) to Gunner’s Quoin and Gabriel Island. Trapping on Gabriel confirmed that shrews were absent, paths have been cut on Flat island to aid collection and release sites on Gunners and Gabriel have been identified.

Future mitigation measures to deal with shrews are being developed at present. One option is to establish a fenced area on Flat island, which high quality predator proof fencing. 

St Lucia
Captures of alien green iguanas from sporadic pulses of hatchlings continue, though only one adult (female) caught this month. Search and removal protocols are being revised to make tracking of performance easier. Simulations of growth of the invading population (using VORTEX) suggest that in at least some plausible scenarios, existing removal efforts are highly likely to drive this alien population to extinction. An entry for this species in Saint Lucia has been submitted to Invasive Species Specialist Group online database, which should be online in July.

Sightings of founder St Lucia whiptail lizards on Rat Island remain low, as do sightings of the normally abundant lizard Anolis luciae. The small "worm lizard" Gymnophthalmus pleii (which has a patchy distribution on the mainland), however, has been seen in large numbers, as have some insects (notably butterflies). It may be that this year's drought badly hit the larger lizards (whiptails, anoles) but stimulated increased insect productivity. Given the difficulty of finding whiptails on Rat Island, I recommend a second translocation in July to augment the population and capitalize on the apparent abundance of insect food.

Following the St Lucia amazon parrot survey last year, complications with the way in which some birds were observed in the field, means that we will have two population estimates. Numbers range between a lower estimate of 1,800 and an upper estimate of 3,200, with the true value lying in between. This is still an order of magnitude above the estimate of 100 birds in the 1970’s and much higher than current estimates. It is likely to lead to the bird being downlisted by IUCN, which would be a great success for the species and the conservation efforts of the St Lucia Forestry Dept.

Montserrat
Swabs collected in May from the Roaches area are currently being analysed in London by ZSL, with results due by the end of August.

Captive breeding has been very successful so far, so much so that we are able to look into the possibility of releasing animals back to Montserrat in 2010. Planning has started to see if this is feasible and desirable.

Western Caribbean
Matt Goetz got back from Little Cayman where he has been studying the endemic rock iguana. He was able to catch the nesting season and build up a strong picture of where the hotspots on the island for these iguanas are. The next stage will be a planning meeting to be held in Little Cayman early in 2011.

Antigua
The Antiguan racer population was censused again and the current population estimate from Great Bird Island (the source population) is 172 ± 52 adults and subadults (not including 10 racers translocated from Great Bird Island to York Island during this census). This is the largest the estimate has ever been; it may change somewhat as more data come in this year, but it does appear subjectively that the population is especially high this year. This may be due to an increase in insect numbers. The overall population is projected to be greater than 500 individuals, which is an incredible achievement since the project started in 1995 with fewer than 50.

Galapagos
Monitoring and radio-tracking of the translocated mangrove finches continued into June. The team cut three more transects to enable bird monitoring, and two kayaks were taken into the field to increase access around the mangroves, radio tracking was done from the boats whilst paddling along tidal channels.

The radiotags have now fallen off the birds and 4 of 5 five tags have been recovered.

More excellent publicity for The Last Survivors project - an hour-long programme called Aventura Selvagem ran on Brazillian TV ran covering the project and including an interview with Jose Nunez-Mino.

Training

European Union funded education project initiated in a meeting up in Edinburgh this month.  This project will bring members of the public together to ask them for their views on how we could more effectively convey a conservation message to people like them in our wildlife park.  In 2011 we will then put these ideas into practice, providing an opportunity for us to develop some exciting new interpretation around the park

Bird husbandry training course run for bird conservationists from Madagascar and the Philippines and staff from zoos in Portugal, Greece and Switzerland.  The course equipped participants with new skills in managing and breeding threatened birds in captivity– we’re already receiving reports from participants of first breeding attempts for some of their birds since applying some of the new skills learnt.  The course also generated £8000 to be put back into our conservation work

Wildlife Park

Discussions began between the Head of Field Programmes and all animal departments on defining a conservation focus for each department as part of a revitalised conservation strategy.

Three critically endangered blue-crowned laughing thrush fledged this month in the Jewels of the Forest aviary, and a singleton golden lion tamarin was born to a recently imported pair of these endangered primates.

Work began converting an existing unused animal enclosure (an old ape house) into accommodation for our recently imported red-billed choughs, which will contribute to the proposed reintroduction project of this bird to the north coast of Jersey. The renovation work is being carried out with many corporate helpers.

Considerable success with mountain chicken breeding on site. Over 100 metamorphs were removed from their nests this month with more still on the way. Our improved success with this species now means we may face a logistical problem in where to house the growing animals. Nevertheless a milestone was achieved – these additions means that the Herp department has now recorded it's 2500 amphibian birth!

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