Mountain chicken update 1: What's happening in the field

We are now a couple of months clear of the initial rescue efforts for the mountain chicken and we have been able to take a breather, step back from the emergency and start putting together a real plan of action on how to respond to the situation. This does not mean that we have time on our hands, far from it; we are under immense pressure to act quickly on a number of fronts.

Two shipments of frogs came out of Montserrat. The first 24 frogs were sent to London Zoo and Durrell. Then on 14th April a second shipment of 26 frogs was sent directly to Parken Zoo in Sweden who very kindly took on this large number of animals.

Gerardo García, our Head of Herpetology left Montserrat just the same day the frogs were flying to Sweden. Before this second shipment occurred he was replaced by Matthias Goetz, our Deputy Head of Herpetology, who oversaw the capture and transport of the animals. Gerardo and Matt overlapped for only a few days and so had a very tight agenda to make all the necessary visits to the sites, run the treatments in the wild and collect the second group of frogs from Fairy Walk. They also had to process the large number of preserved specimens of frogs for skeletochronology, stomach contents and biometrical studies.

We were unable to cover Matt's time and experiences in the blog while he was out there. But Matt has very kindly brought all his experiences together in a diary describing his time out there. We have attached it here for download as a PDF here. Please have a read for the complete story of how he got on.

The most emotive moment for Gerardo during this second trip was during the collection of frogs destined for to Parken Zoo. He described the experience: “It’s hard to explain the incredible chorus of frogs in the streams of the Fairy Walk in the middle of the night. You start hearing it a long time in advance and the excitement increases when you get closer to the valley and their calls are louder and louder. Before you realise it you are surrounded by frogs calling pretty close to you.

You point the torch to the pools and they are everywhere; in perfect shape and ready to start the breeding season. Hard to believe that only a few meters away entire populations of frogs have been decimated by the chytrid fungus. Looks like a small Paradise where nothing bad could happen.

The collection of this group was quick and very effective. It didn’t take too long to get 26 frogs of a considerable size. You bag, pack and…you can’t leave the site. You get seduced by the incredible harmony and peace in the stream. I did spend some time taking photos and video recording more frogs down the stream. It was a very private moment, it was a very personal way to wish them goodbye because you can’t get out of your head the fact that you probably won’t hear them there again, as has happened in the rest of the island.

The time runs quickly and we had to take the 26 bags back to the facilities to start the chytrid treatment before their shipment to Europe. So we divided the animals between the team and we started walking, avoiding comments about for how long frogs would survive in Fairy Walk. I was the last one to leave and I did this on purpose because I wanted to keep in my mind the memory of their calls as a reminder of our responsibilities to do anything to save the frogs from what right now is the most threatening element in the environment for them, invisible but terribly effective.

Something that I couldn’t stop thinking was that my son will probably never see them in Montserrat when he’s a young boy if we don’t find solutions urgently. The thoughts that all these efforts and years of work with the species could be gone in a few months are terrifying. I continued walking up the hill carrying the bags and I admit that I shed a few tears. Hopefully I’ll see them again on my next visit to the island”.

Matt stayed on for another 10 days to collect more samples from wild frogs and survey additional areas. He also monitored the main areas of Pelican Ghaut and Fairy Walk, which contained the largest numbers of frogs.

Since the second capture trip, we have been working with ZSL on an experiment to see if chytrid could be treated in the wild. We started with a very preliminary pilot study to see if we could capture the same frogs repeatedly and treat them in a bath of anti-fungal agent. This approach works very well in captivity, but poses lots of logistical challenges in the wild. These trials have continued since March and the results seem to be very encouraging.

Not only are we able to catch the same frogs but they are surviving. Now it is very early days and we are working with ZSL on starting a dedicated field experiment with controls and a rigorous method to really test the approach. This could provide a really important breakthrough in the treatment of this disease.

We have also been getting regular field reports from Blacka and Nicholas Waldron, who provided a lot of support while our teams were collecting animals. They have led the field treatment pilot study in Pelican Ghaut and have been monitoring the main population in Fairy Walk.

What seems to be very encouraging but is also a bit puzzling is that animals are surviving in Fairy Walk. This is great news but we need to know why. Is it something to do with the change in season from dry to wet or is it something to do with the behaviour of the animals? This will have to be studied in some detail. Again it doesn’t mean we can slacken the pace, because we have seen that once the disease exerts an impact the effects are very fast indeed.

Check out the next update to find out how the chickens in the captive breeding programme are getting on.