Guest blog from; RSPB Senior Conservation Scientist, Dr Michael MacDonald, Environmental Programmes Assistant for the National Trust for the Cayman Islands (NTCI) Catherine Childs and Executive Director of the Anguilla National Trust (ANT), Farah Mukhida.
Anguilla and Cayman are fantastic UK Overseas Territories in the Caribbean. Thanks to funding from the Darwin Plus Initiative, the RSPB has been working with Anguilla National Trust (ANT) and the National Trust for the Cayman Islands (NTCI) to support these local organisations in a project to promote the designation and appropriate management of protected areas.
About Anguilla
Anguilla consists of one main island, and several offshore cays, some of which are crucial seabird nesting sites. It’s a spectacular place with white sand beaches, salt ponds, expanses of cacti-speckled scrubland, a dry tropical forest, small patches of mangroves, and near shore seagrass beds and coral reefs. Its ecosystems are surprisingly diverse, and Anguilla holds over 300 species of plants, 135 species of birds, 21 different types of reptiles, and five species of bats. And that’s just on the land. Underwater, turtles, rays, sharks, fish, invertebrates, sponges, corals, seagrass, and algae create a dynamic, fluid world that we are still exploring and trying to understand.
About Cayman
The Cayman Islands, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica, consist of three main islands; Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. These are low-lying limestone islands, sitting on the Cayman Ridge, which rises 6 km from the depths of the Cayman Trough to the south. These islands hold unique species, such as the iconic Blue Iguana, and are known as some of the best diving sites in the world. They also have important terrestrial habitats, such as the Mastic Forest, which is one of the largest intact stands of old-growth dry forest left in the Caribbean, and extensive mangroves on Grand Cayman.
Blue Iguana. Photo by John Binns, IRCF.
Why are these islands so important?
As with all of the UK’s Overseas Territories, these islands are full of spectacular habitats and wildlife, which mostly do not have any form of legal protection. These have their own intrinsic value, but they also support the tourism industry, which is vital to the economy of these Caribbean territories. As part of this project, we are also trying to show that these habitats provide additional benefits to people – known as ecosystem services - to both the people who call this island home and for those who come to visit.
What are ecosystem services?
Ecosystem services are the benefits that we get from the natural world that surrounds us. They can be provisioning services (such as food and water production), supporting services (including nutrient cycling and crop pollination), regulating services (for example, climate and disease control), or even cultural (such as spiritual and recreational benefits). Understanding what services are being provided to us can help us to better apply a more quantitative value to them – so that we know what we may lose should those services be degraded or destroyed (or how much it would cost to replace them). Where appropriate, this can be used to support nature conservation arguments.
What is the RSPBs involvement?
In December 2012, RSPB Senior Conservation Scientist, Dr Michael MacDonald took his sabbatical in the Cayman Islands, in a placement with the NTCI. This began the process of looking at the ecosystem services provided by the Mastic Forest, as well as its vital biodiversity. Following this, the ANT, NTCI and RSPB successfully bid for funds from Darwin Plus for a project with a wider goal of promoting the designation and management of protected areas.
The RSPB has provided expertise to support the local organisations. In February 2015, RSPB Reserves Ecologist, Dr Vivienne Booth, and Senior Climate Change Policy Officer, Dr Olly Watts visited the Caymans Islands to run a workshop on protected area management, acquisition and climate change adaptation. Using case studies and examples from RSPB’s own reserves network and applying these to Cayman and Anguillan protected areas, the participants went through the process of writing a management plan, from information gathering, evaluating information to determine priorities and identifying the actions needed. Climate change adaptation was integrated using the RSPB’s framework for assessing adaptation.
Workshop. Photo by Dr Vivienne Booth.
ANT, NTCI and Viv and Olly also made a series of field visits to protected areas (many of which were managed by the NTCI) so that we could use them as case studies in the workshop. On the Sister Islands of Little Cayman and Cayman Brac where they saw the western hemisphere’s largest breeding population of Red-footed Boobies, as well as the Cayman Brac Parrot Reserve, home to the last remaining Brac parrots. On Grand Cayman, they took a boat trip around the perimeter of the 3500 ha Central Mangrove Wetland, scaled treacherous karst terrain to see the indigenous Blue Iguana in the wild, and hiked through the 2-million-year-old Mastic Forest.
Red-footed Booby. Photo by National Trust for the Cayman Islands.
The RSPB has also been involved in assessments of the ecosystem services of potential protected areas. In January 2014, Dr Michael MacDonald visited the Cayman Islands and Anguilla with his colleague, Dr Richard Bradbury, who is Head of the Environmental Research Section at the RSPB’s Centre for Conservation Science. In the Cayman Islands, they conducted a workshop in which stakeholders considered the ecosystem services provided by a series of sites, and possible changes to the services in the light of threats to the sites. In Anguilla, they trained the ANT so that they could conduct a workshop of their own.
These assessments were based on a toolkit known as TESSA, which has been developed by partners in the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, including the RSPB. This process is important both in the results that it produces, and because it encourages people to think about the benefits that the natural environment provides for them. Even if no obvious services are provided to humans (which, for example, may be the case for some of Anguilla’s undeveloped but biodiversity-rich offshore cays), this doesn’t diminish their importance or their contribution to the well-being of the island or the world; they still need to be managed and protected accordingly.
Reports based on these workshops have since been produced, and are available on the RSPB’s website: Ecosystem Services Provided by Potential Protected Areas in the Cayman Islands: A Rapid Assessment, Ecosystem Services Provided by Potential Protected Areas in Anguilla: a rapid assessment.
What’s next?
This week, Michael will visit the Cayman Islands to assist the NTCI with more detailed ecosystem service assessments at two sites: the Central Mangrove Wetland and the Mastic Forest. These are two sites thought to provide substantial ecosystem services, and which are under threat from potential development on Grand Cayman.
But plenty of other things have also been going on in the project as a whole, like the development of acquisition plans and management plans (incorporating climate change adaptation) for potential protected areas. All of these will contribute to the overall goal of the project, which is that Anguilla and the Cayman Islands have an appropriate network of well-managed protected areas. This doesn’t mean that development isn’t possible too – it does, however, need to be appropriate, wise, and sustainable.