Rescuing the mountain chicken: 31/03/09

Bad news! Two of the samples which had been sent off for analysis from the last trip that Gerardo and Javier made, have come back testing positive for chytrid – but this time from animals in what was thought to be a relatively safer place – Fairy Walk and Corbet Spring. This site is much more removed from the others and so we were hoping that we would have a little time to get animals out of there before chytrid hit.

This emergency mission has hit a new level and we have to make a rapid shift up in gear as we are now really in a race against time to get frogs out to safety – but we woke up this morning to see more heavy rain and so we have had to cancel our trip to Fairy Walk today. This is so frustrating but there is nothing we can do but wait for the weather to improve. Working in this forest under raining conditions is very dangerous due to the threat of get caught under a tree.

The mood however is not gloomy – rather we are more fired up than ever to get into the forest and get our 50 animals out to safety. In the meantime, arrangements are going on for various institutions to receive animals, as Durrell will be working in partnership with them on this captive breeding project.

Late morning we headed down to the transit facility to finalise the export boxes – one of the last things to do is to line the boxes with polystyrene to give the frogs a nice comfortable ride and Gerardo had made arrangements with Lloyd to collect some from the Forestry Department store – recycling works well in Montserrat!

On the way home, we stopped on the roadside to collect leaf litter for substrate – much to the bemusement of the passers-by!

We set out again this evening for Pelican, meeting our Montserrat guides on the way – we needed to catch up every frog we could tonight to give it another dose of treatment. Unfortunately our hopes were dashed – we only found a few of the animals for recapture and the only new ones were dead already. The days of the mountain chicken in Pelican it seems are over.

Midnight and the final task for the day is to set up the moth trap – we are going to need to trap around 10 cricket size invertebrates every other day for each frog we are holding so with the aim of collecting 50 frogs, we will be pretty busy! The easy option would be to import live food for them but Gerardo is totally against this due to the very slight possibility of accidentally releasing some non-native species the to the island. Montserrat has enough problems already!

So with the aid of a black bin, some plastic cut outs and a mercury bulb, the first trap is up and running tonight – it’s a bit windy so it will be interesting to see if we catch anything but with the weather being a little unsettled at the moment, we need to try every night.

Today’s findings give Gerardo and Javier great cause for concern – there is no time to lose now and so it will be a change of plan tomorrow – instead of visiting Fairy Walk to check out the situation there, we will get the treatments baths ready for frogs and aim to bring the first frogs into the centre tomorrow night or Thursday.