Mountain chicken update 3: where do we go from here?

Now that we have animals in captive conditions for breeding, we must work with partners to develop a coherent strategic plan that will culminate in the reintroduction of frogs back to Montserrat. We are putting this together at the moment and will coordinate a meeting of all the partners as soon as possible.

In Montserrat we need to work with the Government of Montserrat to establish a regular monitoring programme for the key mountain chicken sites and initiate the field treatment experiments. We also need to start fairly soon scoping out potential reintroduction sites for the future.

In the captive collections we need to make sure that the conditions that the animals are most suitable to get them breeding as soon as possible. Mountain chickens have a complex breeding system, which is very unusual for an amphibian. Unlike most frogs which expel lots of spawn and survival is effectively a numbers game, mountain chickens show a high degree of parental care meaning that they have fewer offspring but many more of them should survive.

Unfortunately this seems to also make them very fussy breeders and Durrell is still the only organisation to get them to successfully breed in captivity in Europe. We know that the conditions have to be just right for them otherwise they will not breed.

We want to be putting animals back into Montserrat within less than two years if we can. So there is no time to waste. Looking back into Montserrat the question of where we could introduce frogs is still very much up in the air. There is one location that is found on the southern tip of the island, called the Roches Estate that could present a possibility.

This area was isolated from the rest of the island by the lava from the eruption of the Soufriere volcano in 1995. The lava effectively spread from the centre of the island towards the east and the west, cutting the island in half. This forested area on the southern may therefore not have been exposed to chytrid as for the moment we are assuming that amphibians cannot cross the lava fields.

Getting into this area is very tricky and only a Volcano Observatory team go in with helicopters. We have been able to join them and have a quick look around the area, but we will need to work out a way of spending time there to survey the region and make sure that it is disease free. The downside is that this area was one of the major fruit growing regions, which means that there are lots of non-native species such as rats and pigs, which are very bad for the mountain chickens. Any planned release would have to be accompanied by a predator control programme and also a way to monitor the success of the released frogs (probably using frogloggers).

Anyway as the plans progress, we will keep readers updated. Right now we are in a strong position but we definitely have our work cut out for us. This is now a long term commitment to the species and to Montserrat, which we are happy to make. We don’t know if it will work, but we will do our best. That is how conservation functions and we know what could be the result of inaction.