3 December 2009

Fred Burton MBE receives Blue Turtle Award from JNCC Chair, Peter Bridgewater

Fred Burton MBE has worked in conservation in the Cayman Islands for over 20 years, with the last nine as the Director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme – an unsalaried position. He is deeply committed to creating a viable wild population of blue iguanas in their own protected area. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) yesterday evening celebrated Fred’s dedication, at a ceremony held in Peterborough. He was the inaugural winner of the ‘Blue Turtle’ Award for nature conservation in the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.

JNCC Chair, Peter Bridgewater, one of the panel of judges for the Award, said: “It is not often that one person’s efforts are contribute so much to bringing a species back from the brink of extinction, but in Fred’s case this was absolutely the case. There are many examples of extraordinary professional and enthusiastic work being done to conserve and manage the biodiversity of our Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies by the local populations, often with little fanfare. JNCC wanted to help by, once a year, rewarding the work of a particular individual or group. For 2009, Fred was the unanimous choice of the judging panel.”

Blue Turtle Award

The Blue Iguana Recovery Programme relies heavily on its volunteer programme. Dedicated members of the local community feed and care for the animals in the captive breeding facility, as well as give talks and provide public education experiences. Key volunteers from overseas also contribute time and expertise in areas such as specialist veterinary care and radio tracking of released animals. The Recovery Plan for the Blue Iguana is a collaborative effort that is reviewed every five years with the involvement of representatives from local and international environmental agencies and groups.

Gina Ebanks-Petrie, Director, Department of Environment, Cayman Islands Government said of the Programme: “The Blue Iguana was once referred to as the most endangered rock iguana on the planet. Through Fred’s work a very successful captive breeding programme was established and blue iguanas are being re-introduced to the wild. Fred has taken the programme from a backyard project to a fully-fledged captive breeding facility which produces over 100 young iguanas for release into protected areas each year. The programme has been so successful that it serves as a model for other regional projects.”

Tara Pelembe, JNCC’s Overseas Territories Officer, commented: “We hope this is just the beginning of JNCC being able to shine a light on projects and actions that deserve a wider audience and acknowledgement. Fred is inspirational in his care for the blue iguana, and it is a pleasure to celebrate his success.”

Monday 7th December, 2009 Posted: 15:51 CIT (20:51 GMT)

The UK government’s advisory body on conservation has awarded Fred Burton, director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, the new annual Blue Turtle award for his work in preventing the extinction of one of the world’s most endangered species.

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee presented Mr. Burton with the award for his work in Cayman on the blue iguana programme last Wednesday in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire.

Mr. Burton is the inaugural recipient of the Blue Turtle Award for nature conservation in the Overseas Territories and Crown Territories.

Peter Bridgewater, chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee said there had been several nominees, but that Mr. Burton’s accomplishments were “outstanding”.

Mr. Burton has worked in the conservation field in Cayman for more than 20 years, and received an MBE in 2007 for his efforts in the conservation of endangered species. He has been director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme since 2000.

Four years ago, the blue iguana was considered extinct in the wild, but due to the work done by the recovery programme at the National Trust’s Blue Iguana conservation facility in the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park, there are now more than 570 of the endangered iguanas roaming in the wild.

Mr. Bridgewater, who was one member of the panel of judges for the award, said: “It is not often that one person’s efforts contribute so much to bringing a species back from the brink of extinction, but in Fred’s case this was absolutely the case.

“There are many examples of extraordinary professional and enthusiastic work being done to conserve and manage the biodiversity of our Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies by the local populations, often with little fanfare.”

He added: “JNCC wanted to help by, once a year, rewarding the work of a particular individual or group. For 2009, Fred was the unanimous choice of the judging panel.”

Gina Ebanks–Petrie, director of the Department of Environment, said of the programme: “The Blue Iguana was once referred to as the most endangered rock iguana on the planet. Through Fred’s work, a very successful captive breeding programme was established and blue iguanas are being re–introduced to the wild.

“Fred has taken the programme from a backyard project to a fully–fledged captive breeding facility which produces over 100 young iguanas for release into protected areas each year. The programme has been so successful that it serves as a model for other regional projects.”

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee is the statutory adviser to Government on UK and international nature conservation.

According to the committee, The Blue Turtle Award was presented based on the following criteria: nature conservation benefit/added value; innovation; community involvement; and links to a specific project, or demonstrating long–term commitment and dedication.

Any individual, or group of individuals, including governments, from and working on an Overseas Territory or Crown Dependency, can be nominated. The work or project must have been in place for more than a year, demonstrated innovation and have made a real difference.

In addition to a trophy, the Blue Turtle Award gives £500 (CI$675) to the individual or group, and a £1,000 (CI$1,350) contribution to an Overseas Territory or Crown Dependency nature conservation project of their choice.

Tara Pelembe, the committee’s overseas territories officer, said: “We hope this is just the beginning of JNCC being able to shine a light on projects and actions that deserve a wider audience and acknowledgement. Fred is inspirational in his care for the blue iguana, and it is a pleasure to celebrate his success.”

Cayman News Service
Posted on Wed, 10/10/2009

Photo credit: John Binns, IRCF

(CNS): He may be cold blooded, but Gorgeous George, one of Cayman’s best known Blue Iguanas, will be extending a warm welcome to the Cayman Islands to everyone who passes through Owen Roberts international. With the help of local legal firm Walkers, the National Trust has created a stunningly attractive poster of the endangered, indigenous creature for the airport to help raise awareness and promote the work of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme. Gorgeous George will be one of the first things that people see when they arrive in the customs hall and his poster tagline puts things in perspective: “His ancestors have been here for two million years.”

The Blue Iguana Recovery Programme was started by the National Trust in 1990 when they first began breeding captive blue iguanas. The conservation programme has helped ensure the survival of the species, by releasing captive blue iguanas into the wild. It has already had tremendous success with over 120 baby blue iguanas hatched this summer.

Fred Burton, Director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, envisions a self-sustaining, free roaming population of at least one thousand Grand Cayman blue iguanas, living freely in the wild within protected areas, reproducing naturally and continuing to evolve in step with their ever-changing natural environment.

“At the moment we have very roughly about 300 blues restored to the wild, so we have to lift that to at least 700 more and ensure as best we can they are allowed to survive, breed and sustain themselves,” Burton said. “To that end the captive facility is now literally crammed to capacity.”

Walkers and National Trust Airport Sign

Walkers have long been supporters of the programme and the Blue Iguana’s vital part in Cayman’s heritage. The firm said the success of the recovery programme is extremely important and it has adopted the Blue Iguana as a promotional icon, producing branded soft toys since to promote the work of the breeding project at international conferences, as well as to educate children in Cayman.

As a Gold Sponsor of the National Trust, in 2006 Walkers pledged CI$ 60,000 over three years to fund the operating costs of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme.

“I have been very impressed by the Recovery Programme’s plans to develop native ecosystems for the blue iguanas to attract nature tourism to Cayman and inspire a range of commercial products, in order to generate sustainable revenue to fund  the  management of the blue iguana population indefinitely,” said David Byrne, Chief Marketing Officer at Walkers. “This year we have created an even  more realistic blue iguana toy and we hope they will continue to be used as an educational tool and help raise awareness of the need to support the efforts made by the National Trust to help save this beautiful creature.”

Walkers will also provide the National Trust with unbranded toys to sell in their store with the profits from sales going to support the recovery programme.

Walkers said it is committed to being a responsible corporate citizen and its support of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme is just one way in which the firm looks to make a difference within the community, with active participation from staff at all levels.

Today, virtually everyone in the Cayman Islands who walks and talks, and a lot of people beyond these shores, know of the fabled Blue Iguana, the uniquely-hued reptile found only on these sunny islands.

But it was not always so. The fame of one of the most beloved wild creatures in Cayman, the Blue Iguana, and indeed its very existence today probably rests on the efforts and forethought of one man, more than any other, Bernard C. Lewis. For he is the scientist who first described this species, and was convinced that it was a unique species more than 70 years ago

And that is why the official Latin name of this shy star-crossed creature is actually named after him – Cycluria lewisi. [The word ‘cycluria’ is derived from an ancient Greek term meaning “circular” and “tail.”]

His daughter, Mary Lewis was recently visiting Cayman from her home in Tampa, Florida. and she kindly took time out from her first visit to the island since 1975, to talk to the Cayman Net News about her famous scientist father.

“My father was born in Massachusetts, and when was a young man he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford.”

And it was while he was attending that prestigious university that he got the opportunity in 1938 to join the ‘Oxford University Cayman Islands Biological Expedition’ to study the plant and animal life there. While on Grand Cayman, Mary Lewis’s father was able to obtain two Blue Iguanas, a male and a female. And he was able to determine that the species here were different from similar creatures, such as the Cuban Iguana and the Northern Bahamian Rock Iguana.

And in an historic monograph “The Herpetology of the Cayman Islands” published in 1940 by the Institute of Jamaica, the creature which young Bernard Lewis had studied so carefully in Cayman as the Blue Iguana was formally, and for the first time, called Cyclura macleayi lewisi. In his groundbreaking report, Mr Lewis wrote, “the species is nearly extinct and [local] people say since 1925 the ‘guanas’ have become so scarce that it is no longer worth their while to hunt them.”

Unfortunately, as his daughter Mary told the Net News, Mr Lewis was never able to complete his education at Oxford because the Second World War broke out and after returning from Cayman to England he, along with most other American civilians there were asked to leave the UK and return to the United States.

However, soon after coming home to the US, Mr Lewis was offered a job in Jamaica, to work for the Institute of Jamaica, in Kingston. And it was while in Jamaica that he met and married his wife, a young Caymanian woman whom he had previously met in Cayman while he was with the Oxford Biological Expedition.

“Once he met and married my mother in October 1940, he was very busy with his work at the Institution and so was never able take time out to finish his degree,” said Mary with a smile. Aside from Mary, the couple had three other children, Bill, David and Richard.

Mary and her siblings had an idyllic childhood growing up in Jamaica in the 1940s and 1950s. As the children of the Director of the Institute of Jamaica, they were sometimes able to visit special places on the island.

“My father would invite us to come along if we wanted, to go with him as he searched for butterflies on one trip, or go to a dig to search for historical relics, or important bones on another trip. At that time a lot of people knew my father as the Director of the Institute, but very few knew that he had already had a species named after him. He was a very intelligent man, soft-spoken and quiet, and so he never sought the limelight,” Mary said.

Eventually Bernard Lewis won an OBE for his service to science. The Lewis family lived happily in Jamaica until the 1970s, when he retired. He was only in his 60s, says Mary, but this was the period when Jamaica was undergoing tremendous political problems, the economy was falling and violence was on the rise. Mr Lewis had a fatal stroke in 1973, and Mary moved to Tampa in 1978.

On her first visit to Cayman in more than 30 years, Mary Lewis stopped in at the National Trust to ask if they had any information on Cayman’s Blue Iguanas. The young clerk said that they did have some, but not a lot. As she was also buying a t-shirt with a stunning blue iguana on the front, Mary Lewis mentioned that she was the daughter of Bernard Lewis, the man who first confirmed that this species was found nowhere else on the planet.

“Oh, my goodness,” said that startled National Trust staffer. “I was just giving a lecture to some students about your father!”

Up until last year, the majority of our Blue Iguanas mated in early to mid May, and laid their eggs in mid to late June. The pattern shifted suddenly last year, with the majority of our iguanas mating and nesting a month earlier. Colleagues working in Little Cayman and Jamaica saw a similar shift in their iguana breeding times, too. Now here in Grand Cayman at least, last year’s pattern is repeating itself. Is this a long term shift, or will it switch back again at some time in the future? What determines the month Blue Iguanas start to breed, anyway? At this point, we simply don’t know.

Vega$ Eggs

Our eggs are coming both from our captive breeding facility, where the mates are carefully managed for optimum genetics, and also from free roaming released Blues living in the QE II Botanic Park. Our most exciting nest so far is from Vega$, a new addition to our captive breeding stock last year. This is the first year she has given us viable eggs, which we hope will add a new family line, to diversity the young that we will be releasing to the wild.

Zach and Alberto start a nest excavation

We have a dedicated and energetic volunteer team helping Blue Iguana Wardens John and Ricky monitor and excavate the nests. Local volunteer Alberto Estovanovich has been helping almost full time at the captive facility, for several months now. Team Blue international volunteers Carlos Uribe and Zach Freidell are also with us, and a third is due to arrive on 31st May.

When these eggs hatch, and as we gear up towards releasing iguanas into a new protected area in late 2010 or 2011, the captive facility is set to be holding more young Blue Iguanas than at any time in its history so far!