Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust ? Official Blog - Caribbean

Species of the day!

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:51:00 +0100

I don’t know how but the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) figured out that it is my birthday today (17th June) and I suspect thats why they decided to make the solenodon the “Species of the day” today. Its all part of the IUCN involvement with the “International Year of Biodiversity” so please do check out and download the information which is available from here or If your reading this after the 17th of June then go here. The whole of the last survivor’s team feel extremely privileged to have one of our species honoured in this way.

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BBC coverage for the solenodon

Mon, 31 May 2010 16:24:00 +0100

We were not expecting to write another blog until mid June but there is lots of exciting news that we want to share with you and so it warrants this special edition blog. Cristina Fernandez Secades, a student from Imperial College, has joined the project. She has hit the ground running and has already had a very productive time interviewing people in villages located near one of the national parks. The Masters project she is carrying out has two main objectives: 1) to establish the level of predation that solenodon and hutia are suffering because of wild and domestic dogs 2) finding out the tolerance of people to damage of crops/livestock from both endemic and introduced species before a response is triggered, in addition to assessing the type of response created (e.g. poison, traps, hunting, etc).

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Progress on the last survivors project

Wed, 12 May 2010 16:21:00 +0100

by Pedro Martinez and Jose Nunez-Mino

Back in the UK you have been experiencing the arrival of spring, here on the Island of Hispaniola we are still waiting for our next season to start in earnest – namely the rainy season. The island is currently experiencing a bit of a drought and although this is not a good thing in general, it has meant that we have managed to avoid any major soakings since our last update. That’s not to say that no rain has fallen, it just means we have not been caught out in the field when it has. However, instead we have had to cope with searing hot temperatures in order to look for solenodon and hutia in remote sites which can only be accessed via very long treks through areas of dry forest with little or no shade. Its been tough going!!

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Wrapping the mountain chicken field trials

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:13:00 +0100

By Sarah Louise Smith

Since the last blog post volunteers on the Mountain Chicken project here in Montserrat have come and gone as we have seen Andres Fernandez return to Spain and have been delighted with the presence of the Linn Lagerstrom from Parken Zoo in Sweden for the month of the December. However, the future of the Mountain Chicken frog has been a rocky rollercoaster. Firstly, the rains ceased as during December and January the whole of the Caribbean entered into a drought. This was good news for us as it meant our visits into the forest were not interrupted by torrential storms. However, this also meant that thick layers of ash were accumulating in the forest (and on the frogs) as the volcano continued to be extremely active giving us a grey Christmas.

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Oh the irony..mountain chickens and volcanos

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:35:00 +0100

Last week saw us organise the second workshop for the Mountain chicken restoration programme. Those of you following the blog will know about the plight of the mountain chicken frog. Reduced to existing on the two Caribbean islands of Montserrat and Dominica by the introduction of predators such as mongoose and rats, the species has now been hit by chytrid on both islands. Coupled with this, the last remaining wild population of any size then got covered in volcanic ash by a partial dome collapse in the Soufriere volcano in Montserrat in February (sound familiar??)

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Counting the blue iguanas

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:33:00 +0100

Matt Goetz, Durrell and Fred Burton, Blue Iguana Recovery Programme

Last December saw the sixth annual release of young Blue Iguanas (Cyclura lewisi) into Grand Cayman’s Salina Nature Reserve brought the total number of iguanas released back into the wild on Grand Cayman to over 300. It was now time to take a detailed look at how all those iguanas were doing. We knew they started breeding in the wild in 2006, but how successful had this natural breeding been in raising the total wild population even further?

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Hispanional solenodon: the work carries on.

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:03:00 +0100

I simply can’t write this blog without mentioning the devastating earthquake that hit Hispaniola on the 12 of January 2010; it was felt throughout the island although its destructive impact was concentrated on the Haitian capital (Port-Au-Prince). I was in the capital of the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo) at the time and we felt it there too; some people in Santo Domingo ran out of and away from buildings in fear. In terms of the project, this natural disaster is likely to have a real impact in the future. Thousands of people have lost everything and many have been displaced. In the short term, the immediate humanitarian need obviously takes precedence. However, I hope that in the long term the environmental/conservation aspect is taken into account as part of Haiti’s recovery plan.

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Treating chytrid on Montserrat 25/11/09

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:57:00 +0100

Here on the island of Montserrat the project to help the mountain chickens in their fight against the deadly chytrid fungus continues. During the last weeks the weather has been quite harsh as we are now in the middle of the wet season and heavy rains arrive almost every day. These rains completely change the scenery at both ghauts, the streams run with an amazing strength washing everything in their way towards the sea. In spite of all these rains, only very few times this has stopped us from going into the field and we are still treating the frogs and continuing with the established protocols of the project.

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Volunteering in St Lucia: monitoring whiptails

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:22:00 +0100

By Edward Bell

When not working in the coastal dry forest looking for White-breasted Thrashers another role we have out here is the continued monitoring of the St Lucia Whiptail lizard Cnemidophorus vanzoi. The St Lucia Whiptail is found only on four offshore islands around the coast of St Lucia, it was believed to be found on the mainland but by the time of its discovery in the 1960’s it ended up restricted to two Islands off the south east coast of the island, Maria Major and Maria Minor. Durrell and St Lucia forestry Dept successfully implemented a translocation to Praslin Island just up the east coast in 1997 to try and ensure the survival of the population. It was the introduction and spread of invasive species such as rats, mongoose and cats which we assume led to the whiptail dieing out on the mainland – so the first which needed to be done when translocating this lizard was to remove any potential predators off the islands.

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Volunteering in St Lucia: a dry forest in a very wet dry season

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:12:00 +0100

By Edward Bell

The beautiful bustling island of St Lucia is going to be my home for the next 6 months. St Lucia is part of the chain of islands known as the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, the Lesser Antilles with the exception of Barbados are volcanic islands, some more active then others e.g. Montserrat. The mountainous terrain in the center of the island helps shape the climate trapping moisture leading to lush vegetation and rainforests at the core and coastal dry forest down the Atlantic east coast.

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The Last Survivors: saving endemic mammals in Dominican Republic

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:20:00 +0100

By Jose Nuñez-Miño, Durrell Caribbean Programme

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (DR) - Arriving in a country to set up and run a new project is never easy. Luckily for us we have a fantastic in country collaborator in the shape of Jorge Brocca, the Director of “Sociedad Ornitológica de la Hispaniola” (SOH). Not only is he a highly accomplished conservation biologist but also knows how to get things done in the Dominican Republic. He has definitely made everything happen far more smoothly than we could have imagined. It’s a promising start to the Darwin Initiative-funded Hispaniolan land mammal project which is looking at the long term conservation prospects of the last two surviving terrestrial mammals on the island: the Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus) and the Hispaniolan hutia (Plagiodontia aedium).

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Stunning aerial image of Montserrat

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:37:00 +0100

NASA has just released a stunning image taken by astronauts on board the International Space Station. Apparently its a called an oblique image which is taken at an angle rather than vertically, which is more common in satellite images. This gives a greater sense of depth and dimension to the image.

The image is taken upside down and so the south-western tip of the island is in the top left corner of the image. Importantly the image clearly shows the area that we are interested in - the South Soufriere Hills (green forested area in top left of image). This is the area that we hope to survey fairly soon to see how suitable it may be as an area to release mountain chickens. Click on 'More' to see the full image of the island and for a link to the NASA website, where you can download it.

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Treating chytrid in Montserrat 20/10/09

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:34:00 +0100

For both of us, Gonçalo and Andres, it is our first time here at Montserrat. We are really proud of being involved in a project like this one. Having such an amazing opportunity of working with a critically endangered species, and being in a position from which we are actually trying to help the frogs is certainly invaluable. It also gives us the chance of working along the Montserratian Forestry Department’s Staff. We have already pleasantly realized how aware are these people of the importance of the Mountain Chicken as national treasure and also how committed are they to the project. They have an extremely good predisposition and they are always willing to help. This is something we really appreciate, since without their contribution it would be completely impossible to carry out this mission.

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Treating Chytrid in Montserrat 06/09/09

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:08:00 +0100

Sometimes the weather does not help you out when you are involved in a field work project such as this one. This is definitely something we have learned during the last week here at Montserrat, when Tropical Storm “Erika” passed over us, preventing us from going into the field as many days as we intended to. Moreover, once the storm passed over the island, it left both Pelican and Fairy Walk Ghauts with large volumes of water flowing through them. The water, running rapidly, changed the appearance of both study sites almost completely, washed everything in its way downhill and made our work there a little bit more complicated. In a field project like this one, having the help and commitment of staff from the Forestry Department is really important, but this week their knowledge of almost every inch of the terrain we are working in, and also of the quickly changing weather of the island, was essential. Thank you so much guys!!!

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Treating Chytrid in Montserrat 30/08/09

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:20:00 +0100

Days are passing quickly here in the Caribbean. As the hard but rewarding field work continues as we keep the project “alive and kicking”, collecting a large number of samples and lots of data. We are currently working at two study sites: we are continuing the pilot study into the effectiveness of anti-fungal baths as a treatment for chytrid fungus that was started in March at Pelican Ghaut, and we are conducting the full-scale trial at Fairy Walk. Each site is being visited three times per week. The situation differs markedly between the two sites: while we are only finding two or three frogs per night at Pelican, in Fairy Walk we have found more than 60 frogs on a single night. We are also finding small numbers of dead frogs at Fairy Walk, but this is to be expected.

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