By Dany Vencatasamy - Mauritian Wildlife Foundation

As I came back to Ile aux Aigrettes for a couple of days in the 3rd week of December, from island trips with the reptile team to Gunner’s Quoin and Round Island, my first thought was to check all the Guenther’s gecko eggs that were remaining to hatch. Of the 36 eggs that had been laid 15 had already hatched and one juvenile Guenther’s gecko was observed. I also found another 13 eggs.

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By Nik Cole

At the end of October I had the opportunity to accompany two researchers of the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa on an eight day expedition to St Brandon. The expedition was in conjunction with the University of Mauritius to investigate levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), such as dioxins, PCBs and DDT in seabird eggs.

The islands of St Brandon, also known as the Cargados Carajos Shoals, are situated approximately 430 km north-east of Mauritius.

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by Dany Vencatasamy (MWF)

On 12 November 2010, while monitoring one of the 50 Guenthers geckos Phelsuma guentheri that were released on Ile aux Aigrettes earlier in the year (see earlier blog) I came across a pair of Guenther eggs. Had I not been searching for the big fat female gecko, whom we knew was gravid (with eggs), I would not have found the two large white eggs hidden beneath a patch of leaves and glued onto the branch of her favourite Gastonia tree. Guenthers geckos, as most other geckos, only produce two eggs at a time, but unlike most other day geckos the Mauritian species glue their eggs to the substrate. The female first lays two large soft shelled eggs, which she holds with her back legs to dry. As they dry they harden and get stuck to one another and also the rock or branch where the gecko has chosen.

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By Nik Cole, Durrell Mauritius Programme

March 2010 has been a busy month for the staff of the reptile team in Mauritius, translocating 550 endangered reptiles from Round Island to the nature reserve island Ile aux Aigrettes. This translocation forms part of our ongoing work to rebuild the lost endemic reptile communities of Mauritius with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation and the National Parks and Conservation Service.

If you have seen some of the earlier blogs on Mauritius you‘ll know that Ile aux Aigrettes is an important site for the restoration and preservation of one of the last remnants of dry Mauritian coastal forest. Over the past 20 years nearly all invasive plants and numerous exotic animals, such as cats and rats have been removed. The restoration process has led to the re-introduction of endangered plant and animal species. Last year rats were again detected on the island and after a really intensive effort, it seems that we have been able to eradicate them. This opens the way to bring more Telfair’s skinks and Guenther’s geckos back onto the island.

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The Natural History Museum has always been one of my favourite places in London. As an institution, it has been intertwined with the development of our understanding of the natural world for the last three hundred years. The very building itself is a monument to the discovery and reverence of nature. Also although it has some great displays, it’s what goes on behind the scenes that is most fascinating and so I was very excited to see a new series begin on BBC2 about the Museum and the people who work there (Museum of Life, BBC 2, Thursday 8pm).
 

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It has now been over a month since we penned the Aldabra giant tortoises on Ile aux Aigrettes. This prevented them trampling and eating the poison bait that we placed 21 days ago to eradicate an introduced population of rats. With no rat signs for a while now we have removed the poison leaving only peanut oil flavoured chew sticks and baited live traps across the eradication grid, which we check and manage daily.

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By Nik Cole, Durrell Mauritius Programme

It is day 16 of the rat eradication on the island nature reserve, Ile aux Aigrettes. We have not found any rat chew marks in the bait, no rat faeces or encounters with live individuals during our daily searches across the entire island for the past six days. We are starting to feel rather positive that our hard work has paid off and to top it all off it has stopped raining!

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Day 6

Its been wet, really wet and this has taken its toll on the cardboard box bait stations. Two days ago we realised that we would need to replace all our bait stations that were being destroyed by the rain. The ideal replacement would be a plastic bottle, but we need a lot of them. Thankfully, after contacting one of Mauritius' leading soft drinks company, Quality Beverages Ltd., they gladly donated lots recyclable plastic bottles for us to fashion into new waterproof bait stations.

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By Leanna Racine and Tara Imlay, Mauritian Wildlife Foundation

Day 1 – Setting the poison grid
Our alarms go off and we slip out of our bunks. Its 5:30 in the morning and we have 394 bait stations to place. With additional help from other staff from Mauritian Wildlife Foundation and the National Parks and Conservation Service, the reptile team sort everyone into eight groups. Each group is armed with small cardboard boxes, a stapler, permanent marker, notebook and poison. We set off with compass and map in hand to find bait stations. We are quick to discover that finding our stations is A LOT easier said than done even with each point made accessible. Most of the time was spent using a machete to further clear the paths through dense vegetation (usually with lots of thorns) and locate the pegs that indicate corners of the 12.5 x 12.5 m grid covering Ile aux Aigrettes. Poison was placed at every second grid peg, laying down a 25 x 25 m poison grid across the island.

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By Rouben Mootoocurpen, Mauritian Wildlife Foundation

Rats have got onto the island of Ile aux Aigrettes, which lies just off the coast of Mauritius. This small island has been restored by MWF as a nature sanctuary and icon of what biodiversity in Mauritius used to be like. But for fragile islands such as this, the introduction of rats can be devastating to native species. In the last post we saw how once the evidence of rats was first seen, the eradication process was started.

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