As part of their biosecurity monitoring of offshore keys, the Anguilla National Trust staff members, along with volunteers, during the past week visited Dog Island.
Dog island is considered to be one of the most important off-shore cays in the Lesser Antilles for nesting seabirds. With over 400,000 birds on the island during the nesting period, its a magnificent sanctuary for birds, including a frigate bird colony that nests there. While on the island did some terrestrial bird counts, wetland bird counts and lizard counts. According to Farah Muhkida, Executive Director of the Trust, it has been doing these bird counts since eradicating all the rats on Dog Island a few years ago. The data collected will be analyzed to see what happens in trends for those species.
The Trust also conducted, as part of its smaller research projects, funded by the UK, in collaboration with the Caymans Islands, British Virgin Islands and University of Liverpool, a project looking at sea birds, specifically the magnificent frigate birds ‘the man-o-war’ and where they go. Ms. Muhkida stated: “Our staff have been putting satellite trackers on adults, as well as young, to find out where they go, where they forage and where they move in the region. Our staff have trackers found last year that these birds almost stopped on every single island down the island chain, all the way to Trinidad. These birds are highly migratory, but the purpose of the trackers is to also figure out where they are foraging and where are the important fish sites for them, and that can help us plan different marine activities.”
While Dog Island can be seen as a sanctuary for birds, there is also a population of wild goats that inhabit the island.
