Efforts on to control invasive species, protect endangered ones

By Marlon Madden

Barbados could soon have a biosecurity site on five acres of land to ensure protection and replenishment of the native, critically endangered leaf-toed gecko.

Professor of Conservation Ecology at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Julia Horrocks made the disclosure as she addressed a recent public lecture at the Barbados Fisheries Division on Fighting off the Invaders: How UWI Ecologists are Helping to Tackle Species Invasion in Barbados.

The lecture formed part of the UWI, Cave Hill Campus’ year-long 60th-anniversary celebration.

Professor Horrocks told the audience that invasive alien species (IAS) continued to be a significant problem for Barbados and other Caribbean islands, warning that they had the potential to wipe out native species and have a devastating impact on human health and economies.

However, indicating that all was not lost, she informed that the Cabinet-appointed working group on biodiversity has been advising the Government on how to prevent introduction of new invasive species and manage existing invasive species.

Horrocks said one major initiative being carried out involved the protection of the endemic leaf-toed gecko. That is being led by ecologist Connor Blades, and forms part of a wider US$10 million Global Environmental Facility (GEF) project for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean which was approved in 2018.

Special provisions are being made for the leaf-toed gecko that was rediscovered here in 2011 in the coastal areas, after it was thought to have gone extinct.

“So what we are doing for the leaf-toed gecko is we are creating a biosecure area. We don’t have the luxury of offshore islands like Redonda [an island off Antigua and Barbuda], where you can actually clear the island of invasive species, so we have to create our own island actually in Barbados,” said Horrocks.

“This is what is happening with the assistance of Fauna and Flora International – we are creating a two-hectare biosecure area in which we will have special fencing around it to stop species which prey on the leaf-toed gecko, like mongoose, rats, centipedes, and we are going to try to prevent the incursion also of the white gecko,” she said.

Horrocks did not disclose the planned location for the project or how soon it would get started.

However, she also reported that work had already begun in the management of the mongoose and rat population in a section of the parish of St John, in an effort to protect selected hawksbill turtle nesting sites.

“Bath is a very important nesting beach. It has a sub-population of nesting turtles which is different to the population nesting on the west and south coasts. So it is important from that perspective,” said Horrocks, who indicated that the nesting sites there had been “suffering greatly” from the invasion of the rat and mongoose population, with some 40 per cent of them being destroyed by mongooses.

“So this project is actually looking at whether mongooses and rats can be controlled at the nesting beach. In one year alone, more than 50 mongooses were trapped at Bath and this has contributed greatly to the overall success of the critically endangered hawksbill turtle,” she reported.  

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb