WLI Bulletin September 2023

This was another school year full of activities under the LIFE Barrier Islands project. Sessions in the classroom, sessions at RIAS, and even boat trips. What a year!

This project – co-financed by the European Union’s LIFE programme – aims to protect the dunes’ vegetation on Deserta Island, by removing non-native plants and improving the boardwalk. Additionally, it has been assessing the state of Audouin’s Gull and Little Tern populations, and working with fishermen to prevent birds like the Balearic Shearwater from getting caught in fishing gear.

Our organization, RIAS, is responsible among other things, to raise awareness about these threats, by visiting classrooms and explaining to kids how they and their families can contribute to protect this region’s biodiversity.

In 2023, we already visited more than 1,000 children in the classroom, and took 130 students around 11 years old to the only place where Audouin's Gulls nest in Portugal, Deserta Island. Here, we were able to see the world’s biggest nesting colony of this ‘Vulnerable’ gull.

Once on the island, the students were adventurous enough to set off for the 3 km hike that awaited us. On the way, we watched several species of birds, talked a bit about dunes and the importance of removing invasive plants, and even picked up some trash left behind by visitors to the island.

These students were also brought to visit our centre. Since they already knew our work and our facilities, we decided to be a bit creative, and made up a ‘beach’ next to our Visitor Centre. Apparently, little terns appreciated our fake beach, and decided to fake nest in there. Taking advantage of this, we let the young biologists do the monitoring of these nests. They found the nests, counted the eggs, and check if they were intact or damaged by some threats.

By Molly R Gaskin, President

Karilyn Shephard, Vice President / Hon. Treasurer

One of the most urgent challenges now facing humankind is to stop and reverse the growing deterioration of our natural environment. There is now global recognition that our natural resources are being over used and destroyed at alarming rates. Extirpation of species all over the world today is higher than it has ever been in the Earth’s history. Not only wildlife but its habitats, ice-caps, forests, wetlands and coral reefs are disappearing at alarming rates. As global warming continues, ice caps are melting, climatic conditions are changing.

We share our planet with between 5 and 10 million animals and over 250,000 different types of plant. Every day we benefit from this great diversity of life in the things we eat, our medicines, and through many of the materials found around our homes, schools, and places of work. We enjoy seeing wildlife on TV, in the countryside, and when we visit nature reserves, parks, zoos and gardens. Wildlife is part of our lives – but we, too, are part of the living world and, like all other forms of life, are dependent upon complex web of inter-relationships which govern the quality of air, water, soil and climate. In short… WE NEED WILDLIFE IN ORDER TO SURVIVE.

Each species has a particular ecological niche or role that it plays in an ecosystem. An ecosystem can be as large and complex as our entire planet, or, as small as a drop of swamp water. But no matter the size, its NETWORK IS VERY DELICATE INDEED, remove too many links and the chain is broken. Conservation in the wild state through habitat protection is by far the preferable form, for whole systems are conserved in a dynamic state – species conservation in captivity tends toward ‘preservation’ of the organism out of the context of its wild state.

With continued loss of forest cover, water and food shortages are predicted to be major global issues. Preserving the productivity of our soils, healthy water catchments and our forests is of fundamental importance to our region and the wellbeing of the Caribbean people, in fact, to people everywhere. Diversity is the key to the continuation of LIFE on Earth: the myriad food crops and healthy soils that enable us to grow food under all kinds of conditions; the insects that form an essential part of the (OUR) food chain; the millions of different micro-organisms that are responsible for everything from the operation of our own (human) digestive tracts to the clean-up of oil spills. It is the diversity of these gene pools that makes possible MANKIND.

In Trinidad and Tobago, conservation in the wild is achieved in a variety of ways – breeding and releases into the wild from the Pointe-a-Pierre Wildfowl Trust for locally endangered waterfowl and wetland birds, has seen the re-introduction of several species that was once considered locally extirpated. As well as the education of our People, our schools and all adults.

Starting from the symbols that we have found, as if hieroglyphics, in different species of lichens, we will try to create our own language. Our own way of interpreting the shapes of the lichens, with the aim of sending messages to nature warning about the risk that pollution can pose not only to the lichens but to many other species.

Some phrases that our students have built:

• Nature is still alive, it speaks, and is crying for help.
• Human beings can talk to each other, we speak English, Spanish, French, but we haven´t been able to speak with nature yet.
• We are looking for answers in the stars, on the moon, even in Mars and, at the end, nature has always had all the answers.

This project will involve six teachers from different academic fields as well as of the students who are part of the research group on the environment and natural sciences. We will also have the assistance and advice of Santiago Mejía, former students at de school and student of ecology at Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá.

The end of the project will be represented in a sculpture to be installed in the Wetland.

Given the biological value of the Bahía Samborombón Wetland in Argentina, two Provincial Nature Reserves have been declared by the Ministry of Environment of the Province of Buenos Aires (MAPBA), the Bahía Samborombón and Rincón de Ajo reserves. In 1997 it was recognised as a Wetland of International Importance and in 2011 as a Site of International Importance of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN/WHSRN).

At the southern end of Samborombón Bay in the town of San Clemente del Tuyu, on the beaches of the Rincón de Ajo Nature Reserve, during the months of November and April you can see flocks of up to 30,000 terns (Sterna hirundo), whose species is the logo of the protected natural area.

The members of this species reach the Southern Hemisphere by different routes, concentrating at Punta Rasa. According to scientific studies at Punta Rasa through the monitoring of tagged individuals, it is estimated that a large proportion would remain at the site throughout the summer. The high concentration of terns, recorded over such a long period of time, would make Punta Rasa one of the most important wintering sites in South America.

Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina has been carrying out this project since 1987, and from 2000 the rangers of the Ministry of the Environment of the Province of Buenos Aires joined in. In 2010 onwards the Ranger Service of the Bahía Samborombón Nature Reserve took over the full continuation of the project.

The largest breeding colony of this species is on Great Gull Island in New York, with an average of 9,000 active nests. The ‘Great Gull Island Project’ carried out by the Museum of History and Natural Sciences of New York City has been running for more than 50 years. In it, park rangers have collaborated and had the pleasure of ringing the chicks in the USA and then a few years later re-capturing them in Argentina.

During the non-breeding season the birds start to arrive from the Northern Hemisphere in mid- to late- October and remain until April depending on environmental conditions. They arrive with great weight loss due to the long migration they had to make, and use Punta Rasa to rest and feed. They have to regain weight in order to moult and obtain fat that will allow them to migrate to their breeding areas. They feed mainly on fish, which they detect from the air and catch when they dive into the sea. At Punta Rasa they have been found feeding 25 miles offshore, meaning that the wetland provides them with an excellent feeding area.

How are the birds caught?

Currently they are caught with cannon nets, which consist of two cannons that drag the net out to fall on top of the birds. The net has a light mesh that allows the birds to walk underneath it without being injured. Once the net is set, an attempt is made to move the birds to within its range. If the birds are located within the safe perimeter, the net is fired to capture them. During the campaigns, birds are captured and ringed, as well

as morphometric measurements, blood samples and cloacal swabs are taken to monitor the presence of avian influenza in wild birds.

How are the rings fitted?

After the prefix PR-02 the rings have a series of 5 numbers that changes for each case. PR stands for Punta Rasa, in the past they used rings provided by the USA. They have the e-mail address bs@gba.gov.ar so that if someone finds a banded bird they can report it.

23% of the birds captured already have bands from previous captures. Of this 23%, 28% are birds with PR02 bands, the rest are birds banded in other countries.

At Punta Rasa we have captured birds with bands from countries such as the USA, Canada, Brazil, Azores Islands (Portugal) and we have even captured a bird ringed in Finland, the first record of a tern from there for the Americas! The oldest banded tern to date dates back 28 years for the island and 16 years for Punta Rasa. To date there are more than 9000 thousand ringed terns with their own rings with prefix PR02-.

The first telemetry monitoring station in the country was installed in 2019 to be located at the Cape San Antonio lighthouse at Punta Rasa. This monitoring station consists of several antennas that record the movements of birds that have previously been given a nanotag (small transmitter) and that pass through the area. In this way the region becomes part of a much larger network of monitoring stations throughout the hemisphere (www.motus.org) which allows us the possibility of scientific exchange and makes us part of an international network!

This programme, which has been carried out without interruption over the last 13 years, allows us not only to monitor the species, but also to carry out studies of the environmental conditions of the environment, because birds are very good indicators of environmental conditions and environmental monitoring is carried out using different study techniques. At the same time, it allows researchers to carry out various scientific studies that add their activities to the programme. They provide a tool for the training of park rangers from other protected areas, biology and veterinary students in the handling and manipulation of wild birds and in different capture techniques.

The continuity of this study is significant not only in the scientific and management aspects of the protected area, but also as a framework for environmental education and communication, for the conservation of the wetland environments of Bahía Samborombón.

Motus Antenna

The Santay observatory is a floating space for artistic expression, training workshops, environmental research and community integration activities. It was an initiative of the Friends of Santay Association with the support of young architects from the Natura Futura society and Juan Carlos Bamba, architect and researcher of traditional construction techniques in the Guayas River basin. The observatory is inspired by the balsa houses, which are part of the intangible heritage of Ecuador's coastal cities and are in danger of extinction.

The observatory seeks to bring the local community and visitors closer to the natural environment and the ecological diversity of the Santay Island Wetland, which is part of the Wetlands Convention and the national system of protected areas of Ecuador.

It also seeks to strengthen local memory and promote the cultural, educational and social development of the population of Santay Island, which has high rates of unsatisfied basic needs.

It is managed on a voluntary basis by the Friends of Santay Island Association, the Santay Island Residents' Association and the National Recreation Area Ranger Corps. Since its opening on 27 August 2022, the Observatory has hosted seven exhibitions of photography and plastic arts and has been a space for meetings and commemorative events of an environmental nature. Around four thousand people have visited the Observatory.

Thanks to Wetlands Link International (WLI), the global wetland education network, since April 2023 the Observatory is also the Santay Wetland Education Centre, which means that it will be a space for awareness-raising, education and participation activities for its visitors, highlighting the importance of wetland services for both diversity and the wellbeing of its inhabitants. WLI will seek to share experiences, resources, good practices and possibilities for collaboration between CEH Santay and other similar centres.