Rescuing the mountain chicken: 28/03/09

The final part of our work for the ponds in the transit facility was to fix the nets which allow the frogs to jump without damaging themselves or escaping – ingenuity, hard work and team work again resulted in a successful morning’s work. This facility is really beginning to look like a captive breeding centre (??).

In the evening, we made another visit to Pelican accompanied by one of the Montserratian team Calvin ‘Blacka’ Fenton. This resulted in the re-capture of several frogs from previous visits together with just a few new live animals to record but sadly also more dead ones.

 As we drove away from the valley this evening, Blacka spotted a glow in the sky – it was the Soufriere Hills volcano clearly glowing in the dark of the night. Blacka told me that it was quite active in December 2008 and January 2009 when there were some violent and unexpected explosions. He and another member of the Forestry team, James ‘Scriber’ Daley, had been out hunting for pigs in the forest and had been surprised by the sudden falling rocks and ash and had had to run out of the area quickly!

The volcano, although magnificent in its way, is quite a brooding presence here in Montserrat and for the Montserratians whose island was partly destroyed by it, it is a permanent reminder of what they lost back in 1995 when they had to leave their houses taking as little with them as possible before the whole of their town was covered feet deep in volcanic ash.

For conservationists, the volcano is an extra challenge to contend with – fortunately at the moment the volcano is relatively quiet and there are no major restrictions apart from the permanent exclusion zone, which actually covers two-thirds of the island. The volcano is constantly monitored by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, which gives out regular updates on the status of activity. Let’s just hope that it stays quiet for us!