Rescuing the mountain chicken: 07/04/09

Today is the big day! The frogs are due to leave Montserrat on a special charter plane at 4.30pm accompanied by Montserrat vet Nicholas and Forestry worker Scriber. They will take them as far as Antigua and see them safely onto the flight from there to London. Nicholas hates flying and Scriber prefers the calm of Montserrat to the intensity of the touristic Antigua, but both are willing to put these feelings aside for the welfare of their frogs.

See more images of the whole transfer here.

Knowing that everything always takes longer than you think here, we started early – dropping Andrew Cunningham to the airport en route. He has all the samples he needs to work on and hopefully will be able to culture the chytrid fungus from the sample he took from a frog here. It was a bit more complicated to get frogs with advanced cases of fungus infection because in most of the ghauts the frog populations have been completely exterminated.

Javier spent another few hours sitting at his new office desk at the printers - they have become his good friends although they are slightly bemused by what is going on with these frogs! He was even able to commandeer one of their computers to pick up the latest emailed version of the required documents.

Meanwhile, Gerardo was working through the list of the 26 frogs we have in captivity here – looking at weights and sex, working out which to send to Jersey, which to ZSL and which 2 would be left behind for the next shipment. Armed with his list, the printed documentation and labels and 24 of the frog bags, we set out for the transit facility again.

A team of willing helpers arrived from Forestry along with Nicholas the vet and finally we had managed to get hold of a drill to use for making the air holes in the boxes. We split into two teams - one giving the frogs their final treatment bath and general health check up and the other marking and drilling the air holes for the boxes. Each box then had to be cleaned and dusted ready for labelling.

We set up a production line of gluing, sticking and stapling, ensuring that each box was correctly labelled with all the required information. As always time was running fast and we found ourselves with just James and Blacka to help catch and bag up the frogs. We needed to work quickly to get the frogs boxed and dispatched to the airport in time to meet their flight.

Working through Gerardo’s list until each box had its requirement of four frogs, the boxes could then be filled with paper shredding and the lids sealed. By now we had attracted a small group of onlookers who were interested to see what was happening to the frogs.

With this long list of "last minute to do’s" we arrived to the end of the time. With temperatures being so high, we had to load the frogs as fast as possible and start the 15 minute drive to the airport. It was a great sight to see the first vehicle leave the facility, loaded up with boxes.

Arriving at the airport, we found that the flight would be delayed, as the plane had not yet arrived. And as they had taken out all the seats to make room for the boxes, Nicholas would have to fly as “co-pilot” with the frogs and Scriber would have to take the next plane.

Fortunately it was quite cool where the boxes of frogs were stacked waiting and the final clearance was being organised. Customs wanted us to open one of the boxes to check what was inside – they had not experienced anything like this before!

After a long wait, the boxes were re-loaded on the pickup and driven the short distance to the plane. It was a really wonderful moment to see the plane taxi down the runway and take off with the first consignment of mountain chickens – we felt a huge relief that we had finally got to this point and 24 frogs were flying out to safety.

Later in the evening we received phone calls from Nicholas and Scriber, keeping us up to date on the progress of the journey until the final call to tell us that they had been successfully loaded onto the flight to London and all was well. It is a special feeling to know that the plane was on its way to London with the Centre Hills behind it. These frogs are going to be part of the future efforts to repopulate a new area in the South of the island with the hope they won't be affected by the chytrid fungus. But there are many questions and challenges from now on before we'll be able to send the next generation of frogs back to Montserrat. First of all we need to adapt them to the new environment and make it all ready for their breeding season. So many questions and so little time left...

Finally we could relax – it was a job well done by the whole team. It's time to sleep and next morning we should know how the frogs arrived to Durrell and ZSL.