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!

From the Cabinet decision, to negotiating the lease agreement, to signing the lease, has taken time, and admittedly the process hasn’t been material for compelling news. But the lease has now been signed, and registered, and the National Trust for the Cayman Islands is the lessee of 190 acres of Crown land in the East Interior of Grand Cayman, for the next 99 years at least. It’s a hugely significant step forward, both for conservation of the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana, and for its habitat – Grand Cayman’s unique xerophytic shrubland environment.

The Blue Iguana Reserve is closely intertwined with a European Union grant to the National Trust, which (among other things) will pay to build a visitor centre in or next to the protected area. We already have a design for the visitor centre, thanks to Trevor Baxter (Rutkowsi Baxter Houghton) and with ongoing assistance from the structural engineers, Halcrow Yolles. What we don’t know yet is exactly where in the Blue Iguana Reserve this will be sited, and that in turn depends on which suitable access route can be secured.

In the meantime, there’s a lot we need to know about the new protected area, and the only way to find out is to spend time out there. Blue Iguana Recovery Programme staff and volunteers are beginning to trace the boundaries of the Reserve, and are recording the natural features and vegetation at a series of pre-set points scattered throughout the area. This fieldwork will be backed by expertise at the Department of Environment, where specialist Jeremy Olynik will be combining the field reports with high resolution aerial photography to create a detailed habitat map.

Will we find ancient surviving Blue Iguanas out there? Unlikely, but still possible! Will we find soil basins where iguanas could nest? Where will there be natural fresh water we can draw on, to cut the need for field staff to carry huge weights of water every day? What and where are the notable natural features that we should consider when planning nature trails?

We hope as we explore we will soon be able to define some optimal areas to release young captive-reared Blue Iguanas. The first release is scheduled for July-August this year.

Most of the Blue Iguana Reserve is potential Blue Iguana habitat in one way or another. The area is dominated by dry shrubland, and lots of it is growing on the sharpest cliff rock. Add in dense stands of spiny “Corato” (Cayman’s unique Agave), Maiden Plum, Manchineel and Lady Hair, and you could be forgiven for thinking the land has been designed to repel humans.

But walking through slowly and safely on a trail, perhaps in the late afternoon sunshine, the beauty of the landscape is undeniable. Thanks to the low vegetation there are long vistas across the landscape, set off by groups of tall, slender Thatch Palms. Closer at hand the terrain looks like an elaborate rock garden, with an astonishingly diverse array of unusual plants, many of them unique to the Cayman Islands and to this specific habitat.

Apart from a small fragment in the QE II Botanic Park, this specific type of environment was almost completely absent from our protected area system, until now.

We envisage this special place will be accessible to all, once we have completed the access, visitor centre and nature trails. And wandering around it all, will be the next generations of young Blue Iguanas. The new Blue Iguana Reserve gives us space to bring this once near-extinct mascot of Grand Cayman back to a population which can sustain itself indefinitely, and a place where we can commune with them and their wild ancestral home.

This article by Fred Burton originally appeared in the Cayman Islands Department of Environment’s on-line journal, “Flicker”.

The Little Blue Book

In the Cayman Islands and anywhere else in the world, you can read about and purchase the Little Blue Book at:

www.ircf.org/lbb

… and in the Cayman Islands, you can also buy copies  at these stores, with more soon to come:

West Bay, and the West Bay Road area – Macabuca at the Cracked Conch; Ambassadors of the Environment, and the Blue Tip Golf Shop at the Ritz-Carlton; Captain Marvin’s Watersports; Red Sail Sports (Mariott, Westin Casuarina, Grand Cayman Beach Suites); Books & Books; The Book Nook.

George Town area – Cayman Islands National Museum; Artifacts; Blue Iguana Souvenir Outlet; Hobbies and Books; Cathy Church; National Trust for the Cayman Islands; Tortuga Rum Company; Vigoro Nursery; Pure Art; Books by the Bay; Hurley’s.

Eastern Districts – Pedro St James; Vigoro at Agricola; Boddentown Art Shop; Lighthouse Restaurant; QE II Botanic Park; Red Sail Sports (Wave, & Rum Point).

Little Cayman – National Trust visitor centre; Pirates Point Resort.

Cayman Brac – Heritage Designs

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.

It is time now to take a detailed look at how all those iguanas are doing. We know they started breeding in the wild in 2006, but how successful has natural breeding been in raising the total wild population even further? Now that we have placed permanent artificial retreats of a wide range of sizes throughout the core release area, what effect has that had on the population density within the protected area? How many of the iguanas have dispersed out of the release area, and how far have they moved? These sorts of questions need some answers, if we are ever to be able to answer the really important question which we should never take for granted. Is our release strategy actually working?

Field gear in preparation for Salina Blues survey

So we are in the final stages of preparation for a major three-week survey, which kicks off on 2^nd March 2010. Matt Goetz and Stacy Whittaker joined us on 27^th February, with Joe Freeman and Carly Easby following the next day. Megan Rasmussen and Crystal Robertson are on their way as I write on 28^th February, and Doug Bell has already been with us for several weeks.

We’ll be forming three survey teams and one “catch-and-tag” team. The survey teams will be stealthily walking every trail in the Salina Reserve, scanning intensely for iguana sightings twice a day six days a week over three weeks, for a total of 18 survey days and 108 individual survey walks. The catch-and-tag team will back them up with focused attention on any un-tagged or elusive iguanas which the survey teams can’t indentify as they pass.

If all goes smoothly, we will complete the survey before the end of March. Then the survey teams head back home, and the number crunching and mapping work begins. By early May the results should be clear enough to guide us in our next big endeavor of the year – the first iguana release into our new Blue Iguana Reserve!

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…

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.”