Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 55
CO M M UNIC AT IO N
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seabird populations affect these fish and, in turn, the
larger fish that feed on them.
A practical outcome from this would be to guide
conservation action to where it’s most efficient. For
example, rat eradication and restoring seabird habitat
would likely benefit the cryptobenthic communities.
So if we target these populations of fish, we might be
able to have an even bigger impact on larger islands
and they might benefit from these healthy fish populations, too.
RE W I L D I NG
Although we live in an era of
unprecedented biodiversity loss,
there are still things to be found
and discovered and admired.
racer. This harmless and daring reptile was found all
across Antigua and Barbuda, but the invasive species
that came in during colonization made their numbers
plummet. At one point, their numbers were so low,
they were actually declared extinct. But then, 50 individuals were found on the Great Bird Island. And so
the Environmental Awareness Group and its partners
decided to try and save this species from extinction
and embarked on the first rat eradication in the Eastern
Caribbean, starting on Great Bird Island.
How do you study such tiny fish?
Jeannot: We take a camping tent underwater. And
then underneath the tent, we put a solution with clove
essential oil in it which acts like a fish anesthetic. And
so all the fish affected by the anesthetic fall out at the
bottom of the tent and we can pick them up with little
tweezers and bring them back to the surface to count
and study. That’s how we get an accurate picture of
the community that lives in any one area of the reef.
Doing this can lead to some fascinating discoveries.
For example, I was at Fregate Island in the Seychelles,
and we found this tiny translucent fish that’s about
two centimeters long and the species has never been
recorded or described before. It might be a brand
new species. So although we live in an era of unprecedented biodiversity loss, there are still things to
be found and discovered and admired. That’s worth
fighting for.
What happened when you got rid of the rats?
Challenger: The racers doubled in numbers, and that
was great. But then we realized that the lizards they
feed on, the birds that are around there, the vegetation
… everything started to thrive. We thought to ourselves:
Could we do it again? And we have. Since 1995, we have
rewilded 16 additional offshore islands that are mainly
made of coral. But we wanted to upscale what we were
doing. And that’s when we turned to Redonda.
Redonda is the third island of Antigua and Barbuda.
It is about 35 miles away from Antigua, and it’s only
a mile long, but it was once filled with biodiversity
despite the cliffs disappearing into the sea and smothering the surrounding coral reefs. So despite looking
like a moonscape and not having much biodiversity
left, it was still designated as a key biodiversity area
and an important bird area because even though there
were very few trees there were still seabirds, including masked boobies that nest there. Aside from these
birds, there are also a number of critically endangered
and endemic reptiles found nowhere else on the planet,
including the Redonda tree lizard, which, as you can
imagine, was having a hard time on the island seeing
as it didn’t have any trees left. The cause of all this?
Invasive alien species.
Turning now to Shanna Challenger—can you tell us
more about the Environmental Awareness Group and
your work in the Caribbean?
Shanna Challenger: I work for the Environmental
Awareness Group, and we are Antigua and Barbuda’s
longest-standing environmental NGO. We’ve been
working for the benefit of people and wildlife for
over 30 years. Now, Environmental Awareness is our
name, but conservation is our game. And I want to talk
about the conservation work we’ve been doing in the
Caribbean.
Our conservation story began on Great Bird Island.
On this small island off the northeast coast of our country, we began our conservation efforts in 1995 to try
and save a critically endangered snake, the Antiguan
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