This year, we plan to release most into the new Blue Iguana Reserve, and in preparation our Team Blue 2010 volunteers, led by Doug Bell, are roaming the new Reserve collecting habitat data from a series of pre-designated points. We don’t have a permanent access yet, so the team are walking in along property boundary lines and camping out there for two nights at a time. This saves time lost to getting in and out, which is a slow and difficult process!

The camp is a very temporary affair – just some tarpaulins to keep off the rain, some hammocks with mosquito net covers, a small gas burner to cook with, and a little hand pump to suck water up from fissures, which yield drinkable East End groundwater.

In the photo – volunteers Peter Pagoda (from Germany) and Matthew Perez (from USA) eat and rest after a long, hard and very hot day.

The data the survey team is collecting will hopefully allow us to identify the first area where we will release the iguanas.  That places a deadline on the operation – and though the terrain is savage, and going is hard, our Team Blue 2010 volunteers are up to the challenge!

One surprise already was to see some very large Alsophis cantherigerus snakes in the release area – in previous years we have only seen small ones out there.  We scanned the big one shown here, worried that it may have just eaten an iguana – but we were glad not to detect any PIT tag that would have confirmed that.

Matt Goetz (Durrell Wildlie Conservation Trust) with a large Alsophis

Total number of survey walks completed – 162

Person-hours of active survey walking – 945

Total number of iguana sightings – 466

Individual iguanas identified in the survey area – 46

Pairs of boots trashed on the Salina rocks – 5

A huge thank you to the survey team – Doug Bell, Stacy Whitaker, Matt Goetz, Megan Rasmussen, Crystal Robertson, Joe Freeman and Carly Easby, who all joined me specifically to take on this task. Matt, Stacy and Joe have now headed home, Carly leaves tomorrow, Megan and Crystal leave on Sunday, while Doug stays on with us for some time now.

The team is holding up well despite six days per week stealthing across the Salina’s rockscape, which is a little like doing six hours of continuous squats and lunges a day.

Salina rocks are death to boots

We’ve had several boot disintegration problems,  plus plenty sore feet and some protesting knees, but our success in spotting iguanas seems to be better than ever, despite all that.

We’re amassing an impressive data set of sightings of 45 individual iguanas, ranging from a new 2009 wild hatchling to the elusive big boy “Blue-Yellow-Blue” who has taken a large territory in the core of the main release area, but has become so wild we rarely see him at all.

Crystal with BYB ready for weighing and measuring

Then Matt was surprised by an iguana much bigger than any of the iguanas we had been monitoring so far. We trapped him next day, and found out it was “BYB” who had lost his Blue-Yellow-Blue bead tag. One of the original 2004 released males, BYB has grown far outgrown all the others we are still seeing, weighing in at 3.41 Kilograms.  The Salina Blues are growing up!

Final briefing before Salina Survey 2010

Finally we all returned to my home, where we had a final briefing, including the theory and purposes of the survey, and assigning the teams: Matt and Crystal will be the catch and tag team, while the three survey teams will be Megan and I; Doug and Carly;  Stacy and Joe. A meal together (thanks, Sarah!), a toast to the next three weeks work, and we are all set to start the survey work in earnest, tomorrow morning.

We’re planning to offer locally dispatched mail order in the three Cayman Islands, as well as placing stock in local stores. International mail orders will be dispatched from the USA.

So- pre-order your copy now, or keep an eye out for launch publicity some time in mid April…

The SRP III is our new blueprint for saving our Blue Iguanas. We needed it because we have been progressing so well with so many aspects of our previous plans, that our SRP I and SRP II have become redundant one after the next. As fast as we work on implementing each plan, we find new challenges and opportunities, and it seems that every three years is about the right time to get all our Partners together, brainstorm our successes and failures over the last three years, look ahead another three years, and formulate an action-oriented plan that will carry us forward with new commitment and a shared purpose.

Photo: John Marotta

Our incubators are loaded again, as this year’s nesting season reaches its peak. Today we have 106 eggs incubating, and more nest excavations underway. Almost all these developing new baby Blue Iguanas are slated to go free into our new protected area in 2011, after spending two years growing to a safe survival size in the captive facility.

Nesting season is always hard work for our staff and volunteers, but sometimes offers fascinating views into the iguanas’ world. Warden John Marotta took this photo of a native snake (Alsophis cantherigerus) which he saw striking at a small movement in the ground – only to discover its target was hundreds of times bigger than it expected! “Shy”, one of our Botanic Park lakeside females, was just leaving her nest chamber. One very confused snake, a completely unconcerned Blue Iguana, and 11 more perfect eggs in the incubator.

Our example shows how using a flagship species (like the Blue Iguana) can help protect many other species too. Recruiting, training and deploying volunteers lets us achieve far more than we could otherwise afford. Partnerships with conservation organizations, zoos, and universities bring expertise and more resources to bear. And to keep all this support coordinated and focused, strategic planning is vital. It’s a well-tried formula that has worked particularly well for the Blue Iguanas so far!