A new phase in the Floreana Mockingbird Project

by Luis Ortiz-Catedral, Charles Darwin Foundation.

The Floreana mockingbird is a very special bird, given its position as the inspiration for the idea that formed the Theory of Natural Selection in the mind of Charles Darwin. But its also a very threatened bird. The Charles Darwin Foundation, Galápagos National Park, Durrell and Zurich University formed a collaboration to restore this species back to the island of Floreana. And now in 2010, which is also the International Year of Biodiversity, we are able to get this first phase of the project off the ground.

This first of a regular series of blog posts to update you on the project's progress, is really to introduce myself. I have recently joined the Charles Darwin Foundation to implement this new phase. Before coming to Galápagos, I coordinated the reintroduction of Red-crowned Kakariki to the inner Hauraki Gulf in New Zealand. Although they live 10,000 km apart, the mockingbirds and kakariki have a common history: both species disappeared from large islands over 100 years ago, but some remnant populations remain on satellite islets (Champion and Gardner-by-Floreana in the case of the mockingbirds).

How can we help a species expand from these satellite populations to other available habitat? To answer that question, over the next few months we will survey Floreana Island to identify sites where the combination of predation pressure, nesting habitat characteristics and territory quality would allow groups of mockingbirds to breed successfully. This will be done alongside a survey of mockingbirds on the islets aimed at estimating the current global population size and identifying the preferred nesting sites and foods during the breeding season.

Floreana is an inhabited island, and thus our work will be done in close association with the local community within the framework of a bigger project: 'The Floreana Initiative', aimed at the holistic restoration of this 18,000 ha island incorporating sustainable livelihoods, education and applied conservation.