3 December 2009

Fred Burton MBE receives Blue Turtle Award from JNCC Chair, Peter Bridgewater

JNCC Chair, Peter Bridgewater, one of the panel of judges for the Award, said: “It is not often that one person’s efforts are contribute so much to bringing a species back from the brink of extinction, but in Fred’s case this was absolutely the case. There are many examples of extraordinary professional and enthusiastic work being done to conserve and manage the biodiversity of our Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies by the local populations, often with little fanfare. JNCC wanted to help by, once a year, rewarding the work of a particular individual or group. For 2009, Fred was the unanimous choice of the judging panel.”

Blue Turtle Award

Gina Ebanks-Petrie, Director, Department of Environment, Cayman Islands Government said of the Programme: “The Blue Iguana was once referred to as the most endangered rock iguana on the planet. Through Fred’s work a very successful captive breeding programme was established and blue iguanas are being re-introduced to the wild. Fred has taken the programme from a backyard project to a fully-fledged captive breeding facility which produces over 100 young iguanas for release into protected areas each year. The programme has been so successful that it serves as a model for other regional projects.”

Tara Pelembe, JNCC’s Overseas Territories Officer, commented: “We hope this is just the beginning of JNCC being able to shine a light on projects and actions that deserve a wider audience and acknowledgement. Fred is inspirational in his care for the blue iguana, and it is a pleasure to celebrate his success.”

Cayman News Service
Posted on Wed, 10/10/2009

Photo credit: John Binns, IRCF

(CNS): He may be cold blooded, but Gorgeous George, one of Cayman’s best known Blue Iguanas, will be extending a warm welcome to the Cayman Islands to everyone who passes through Owen Roberts international. With the help of local legal firm Walkers, the National Trust has created a stunningly attractive poster of the endangered, indigenous creature for the airport to help raise awareness and promote the work of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme. Gorgeous George will be one of the first things that people see when they arrive in the customs hall and his poster tagline puts things in perspective: “His ancestors have been here for two million years.”

The Blue Iguana Recovery Programme was started by the National Trust in 1990 when they first began breeding captive blue iguanas. The conservation programme has helped ensure the survival of the species, by releasing captive blue iguanas into the wild. It has already had tremendous success with over 120 baby blue iguanas hatched this summer.

Fred Burton, Director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, envisions a self-sustaining, free roaming population of at least one thousand Grand Cayman blue iguanas, living freely in the wild within protected areas, reproducing naturally and continuing to evolve in step with their ever-changing natural environment.

“At the moment we have very roughly about 300 blues restored to the wild, so we have to lift that to at least 700 more and ensure as best we can they are allowed to survive, breed and sustain themselves,” Burton said. “To that end the captive facility is now literally crammed to capacity.”

Walkers and National Trust Airport Sign

Walkers have long been supporters of the programme and the Blue Iguana’s vital part in Cayman’s heritage. The firm said the success of the recovery programme is extremely important and it has adopted the Blue Iguana as a promotional icon, producing branded soft toys since to promote the work of the breeding project at international conferences, as well as to educate children in Cayman.

As a Gold Sponsor of the National Trust, in 2006 Walkers pledged CI$ 60,000 over three years to fund the operating costs of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme.

“I have been very impressed by the Recovery Programme’s plans to develop native ecosystems for the blue iguanas to attract nature tourism to Cayman and inspire a range of commercial products, in order to generate sustainable revenue to fund the management of the blue iguana population indefinitely,” said David Byrne, Chief Marketing Officer at Walkers. “This year we have created an even more realistic blue iguana toy and we hope they will continue to be used as an educational tool and help raise awareness of the need to support the efforts made by the National Trust to help save this beautiful creature.”

Walkers will also provide the National Trust with unbranded toys to sell in their store with the profits from sales going to support the recovery programme.

Walkers said it is committed to being a responsible corporate citizen and its support of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme is just one way in which the firm looks to make a difference within the community, with active participation from staff at all levels.

Today, virtually everyone in the Cayman Islands who walks and talks, and a lot of people beyond these shores, know of the fabled Blue Iguana, the uniquely-hued reptile found only on these sunny islands.

But it was not always so. The fame of one of the most beloved wild creatures in Cayman, the Blue Iguana, and indeed its very existence today probably rests on the efforts and forethought of one man, more than any other, Bernard C. Lewis. For he is the scientist who first described this species, and was convinced that it was a unique species more than 70 years ago

And that is why the official Latin name of this shy star-crossed creature is actually named after him – Cycluria lewisi. [The word ‘cycluria’ is derived from an ancient Greek term meaning “circular” and “tail.”]

His daughter, Mary Lewis was recently visiting Cayman from her home in Tampa, Florida. and she kindly took time out from her first visit to the island since 1975, to talk to the Cayman Net News about her famous scientist father.

“My father was born in Massachusetts, and when was a young man he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford.”

And it was while he was attending that prestigious university that he got the opportunity in 1938 to join the ‘Oxford University Cayman Islands Biological Expedition’ to study the plant and animal life there. While on Grand Cayman, Mary Lewis’s father was able to obtain two Blue Iguanas, a male and a female. And he was able to determine that the species here were different from similar creatures, such as the Cuban Iguana and the Northern Bahamian Rock Iguana.

And in an historic monograph “The Herpetology of the Cayman Islands” published in 1940 by the Institute of Jamaica, the creature which young Bernard Lewis had studied so carefully in Cayman as the Blue Iguana was formally, and for the first time, called Cyclura macleayi lewisi. In his groundbreaking report, Mr Lewis wrote, “the species is nearly extinct and [local] people say since 1925 the ‘guanas’ have become so scarce that it is no longer worth their while to hunt them.”

Unfortunately, as his daughter Mary told the Net News, Mr Lewis was never able to complete his education at Oxford because the Second World War broke out and after returning from Cayman to England he, along with most other American civilians there were asked to leave the UK and return to the United States.

However, soon after coming home to the US, Mr Lewis was offered a job in Jamaica, to work for the Institute of Jamaica, in Kingston. And it was while in Jamaica that he met and married his wife, a young Caymanian woman whom he had previously met in Cayman while he was with the Oxford Biological Expedition.

“Once he met and married my mother in October 1940, he was very busy with his work at the Institution and so was never able take time out to finish his degree,” said Mary with a smile. Aside from Mary, the couple had three other children, Bill, David and Richard.

Mary and her siblings had an idyllic childhood growing up in Jamaica in the 1940s and 1950s. As the children of the Director of the Institute of Jamaica, they were sometimes able to visit special places on the island.

“My father would invite us to come along if we wanted, to go with him as he searched for butterflies on one trip, or go to a dig to search for historical relics, or important bones on another trip. At that time a lot of people knew my father as the Director of the Institute, but very few knew that he had already had a species named after him. He was a very intelligent man, soft-spoken and quiet, and so he never sought the limelight,” Mary said.

Eventually Bernard Lewis won an OBE for his service to science. The Lewis family lived happily in Jamaica until the 1970s, when he retired. He was only in his 60s, says Mary, but this was the period when Jamaica was undergoing tremendous political problems, the economy was falling and violence was on the rise. Mr Lewis had a fatal stroke in 1973, and Mary moved to Tampa in 1978.

On her first visit to Cayman in more than 30 years, Mary Lewis stopped in at the National Trust to ask if they had any information on Cayman’s Blue Iguanas. The young clerk said that they did have some, but not a lot. As she was also buying a t-shirt with a stunning blue iguana on the front, Mary Lewis mentioned that she was the daughter of Bernard Lewis, the man who first confirmed that this species was found nowhere else on the planet.

“Oh, my goodness,” said that startled National Trust staffer. “I was just giving a lecture to some students about your father!”

Up until last year, the majority of our Blue Iguanas mated in early to mid May, and laid their eggs in mid to late June. The pattern shifted suddenly last year, with the majority of our iguanas mating and nesting a month earlier. Colleagues working in Little Cayman and Jamaica saw a similar shift in their iguana breeding times, too. Now here in Grand Cayman at least, last year’s pattern is repeating itself. Is this a long term shift, or will it switch back again at some time in the future? What determines the month Blue Iguanas start to breed, anyway? At this point, we simply don’t know.

Vega$ Eggs

Our eggs are coming both from our captive breeding facility, where the mates are carefully managed for optimum genetics, and also from free roaming released Blues living in the QE II Botanic Park. Our most exciting nest so far is from Vega$, a new addition to our captive breeding stock last year. This is the first year she has given us viable eggs, which we hope will add a new family line, to diversity the young that we will be releasing to the wild.

Zach and Alberto start a nest excavation

We have a dedicated and energetic volunteer team helping Blue Iguana Wardens John and Ricky monitor and excavate the nests. Local volunteer Alberto Estovanovich has been helping almost full time at the captive facility, for several months now. Team Blue international volunteers Carlos Uribe and Zach Freidell are also with us, and a third is due to arrive on 31st May.

When these eggs hatch, and as we gear up towards releasing iguanas into a new protected area in late 2010 or 2011, the captive facility is set to be holding more young Blue Iguanas than at any time in its history so far!

BBC NEWS

By Georgina Kenyon

Wednesday, 7 May 2008


Dr Colin Wakelin tries in vain to save a female iguana

Police on Grand Cayman are hunting criminals who slaughtered six of the island’s iconic and critically endangered giant blue iguanas.

The attacks, which also left three other animals injured, occurred on Saturday night in a captive breeding facility on the Caribbean island. The police are confident the crime was perpetrated by humans. The dead and injured iguanas seem to have been gouged by knives and show evidence of being kicked and jumped on.

Volunteers who look after the iguanas discovered the bodies on the Sunday morning. There have not been any arrests yet but local people and businesses have donated reward money for information of KYD$11,000.

The ferocity of the attack has shocked islanders

“This incomprehensible carnage has brought people to tears,” said Frederic Burton, director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme (BIRP) which is responsible for breeding the iguanas in pens before they are freed into the wild.

To the people on the island of Grand Cayman, it was not unlike the slaughter of the gorillas last year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the body of one dead iguana still missing but its entrails left strewn outside the pen in which it lived. Some of the pens have blood on the walls.

The iguanas are turquoise blue in colour, weigh up to 10kg, live for about 20 years. They are listed by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) as critically endangered.

-GRAND CAYMAN BLUE IGUANA

-Scientific name: Cyclura lewisi
-Related to iguanas found on Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, but quite distinct
-Never stops growing, but growth rate slows with age
-Biggest adults believed to be up to 1.4m nose to tail
-Endemic to Grand Cayman, i.e. found nowhere else
-Blue colour only expressed in the presence of other iguanas

However, because of a successful captive breeding programme on the island, supported by local and international NGOs and community groups, the species seemed to have been saved from extinction and their numbers were growing.

While in 2005 there were only 25 of these iguanas left in the world, now there are 140 iguanas in the captive breeding facility on Grand Cayman, and another 230 iguanas living freely in a nature reserve on the island.

“This has shocked people far beyond just the conservation community and brought out stronger than ever the way this uniquely Caymanian creature has become an icon of the Cayman Islands’ national culture,” explained Burton.

“Each of the blue iguanas killed had rich life stories and distinct personalities. Many people feel they have lost close personal friends,” he said.

There has not been an attack on the iguanas like this before from people, although iguanas have been killed by wild dogs.

One of the dead adult iguanas was “Digger”, a symbol of the BIRP and the iguana that appears on one of the postage stamps of the Cayman Islands.

“They were also the ones that people knew and loved. It is a setback and a horrible tragedy,” said Burton.

The attack comes at a time when naturalists on the island are hoping for government legislation to protect significant tracts of shrubland for the iguanas and other animals.

These deaths were of mature adults, capable of producing large egg clutches and could have kick-started the restoration of a wild population. It is estimated that there needs to be at least 1,000 iguanas for the population to become stable and have a real chance of surviving.

“We are hoping for between 400-500 hectares of land to be protected – this is the area we need to support 1,000 iguanas, ” said Dr Matt Cottam, senior research officer for the Cayman Islands Department of the Environment.

“We are all so shocked at this slaughter. But we are also overwhelmed by the support from the local and international community since this news broke,” he said.

The BIRP and National Trust staff and volunteers are guarding the facility while additional security systems are put in place.

Read the article at BBCNews Here

Cayman News Service
Posted on Wed, 04/01/2009

Grand Cayman Blue Iguana - Photo: John Binns

(CNS): Grand Cayman’s famous Blue Iguanas are one more step further away from extinction following Cabinet’s decision to allocate Crown property to the National Trust coupled with a grant from the European Union to develop the protected area, where 100 hatchling Blue Iguanas will be released in 2010. However, the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme’s director Fred Burton says they will still have to raise much more money to complete the programme. (Photo by John Binns)

The EU grant is designed to cover 57% of the total cost of this particular project, which will fund the majority of the cost of a visitor centre and trails, plus education and awareness materials and programmes that will be based there, Burton said. However, BIRP and its supporters will have to put in a significant amount of other money and paid time, as well as find the funding for the access. “So, there is challenge which comes with the opportunity!” Burton said.

He further noted that the EU grant will be in Euros which as has since lost buying power here in the exchange rate. “So we are expected to, and will have to, raise a fair sum more to be able to deliver.”

In a released statement, BIRP said the Cayman Islands Government had formally committed to protecting almost 200 acres of Crown land in the east interior of Grand Cayman, through a 99-year peppercorn lease to the National Trust. The decision by Cabinet is linked to a European Union grant to the National Trust, for managing this area to conserve Grand Cayman Blue Iguanas in the wild, along with their unique shrubland habitat. The grant also focuses on developing sustainable, low-impact nature tourism, education and recreation with a visitor centre and trail system.

BIRP noted that in 2008 the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme began rearing over 100 hatchling Blue Iguanas, trusting that a new protected area would be established in time to release them in 2010. Now a release site is guaranteed, these young iguanas do indeed have a future, and another hundred or more Blue Iguanas will hopefully be hatched in 2009, for release in 2011.

While blanket protection of the environment in the form of a Nation Conservation Bill was not brought before the Legislative Assembly under the current administration, the release said Minister of Tourism and Environment, Charles Clifford, wished the conservation effort of this programme every success.

“The preservation of our indigenous Blue Iguana is important to our country and I am grateful Cabinet was able to allocate an appropriate piece of property to the National Trust to assist them in their efforts to save the Blue Iguanas. I also want to thank the European Union for their grant which makes this project possible. The grant along with the allocation of the land by Cabinet provides a tremendous boost to the National Trust’s efforts to establish a viable population of Blue Iguanas in their natural habitat,” the minister said.

“This is the breakthrough we have been working towards for years,” said Burton. “With this new protected area secured and available for iguana releases, we are now in sight of the kind of success that is all too rare in the world today. The Grand Cayman Blue Iguana really can be saved from extinction, and in a few more years the Cayman Islands may be able to boast that they have achieved just that.”

According to BIRP, this area is almost all pristine dry shrubland, a wild rocky landscape with views over the generally low native vegetation. This is an environment that Blue Iguanas thrive in. It also supports a range of endangered plants, several of which, like the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana, are totally unique to the Cayman Islands.

The Trust must now acquire access to the land, and a Protected Area Planning Team will commence work on the overall land use plan, including site location for the visitor centre and layout of the trail system.

Eastern protected areas Grand Cayman - Photo: Blue Iguana Recovery Programme

Shrubland - Photo: Douglas Bell

The Cayman Islands Government has just formally committed to protecting almost 200 acres of Crown land in the east interior of Grand Cayman, through a 99-year peppercorn lease to the National Trust.

The Blue Iguana Recovery Programme said the decision by Cabinet is linked to a European Union grant to the National Trust, for managing this area to conserve Grand Cayman Blue Iguanas in the wild, along with their unique shrubland habitat.

The grant also focuses on developing sustainable, low-impact, nature tourism, education and recreation with a visitor centre and trail system.

In a media release, the programme quoted Minister of Tourism and Environment, Hon Charles Clifford, saying, “The preservation of our indigenous Blue Iguana is important to our country and I am grateful Cabinet was able to allocate an appropriate piece of property to the National Trust to assist them in their efforts to save the Blue Iguanas.

“I also want to thank the European Union for their grant which makes this project possible. The grant along with the allocation of the land by Cabinet provides a tremendous boost to the National Trust’s efforts to establish a viable population of Blue Iguanas in their natural habitat.” Programme Director, Fred Burton said, “This is the breakthrough we have been working towards for years”.

“With this new protected area secured and available for iguana releases, we are now in sight of the kind of success that is all too rare in the world today. The Grand Cayman Blue Iguana really can be saved from extinction, and in a few more years the Cayman Islands may be able to boast that they have achieved just that.”

This area is almost all pristine dry shrubland, a wild rocky landscape with views over the generally low native vegetation. This is an environment that Blue Iguanas thrive in. It also supports a range of endangered plants, several of which, like the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana, are unique to the Cayman Islands.

Read the article: http://www.caymannetnews.com/news-14557–1-1—.html

By Diana McAdam
Last Updated: 1:30PM BST 29 Jul 2008

Earlier this year, the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme on Grand Cayman in the Caribbean made international headlines for all the wrong reasons.

On the morning of Sunday May 4, volunteer keepers at the fenced-in facility, which is on the site of the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park, found that four of the adult giant blue lizards had been butchered, two others had been left for dead and another was missing.

At least two of the dead females had been preparing to lay precious eggs. The seven animals represented one-third of the adult breeding iguanas cared for at the captive facility.

The critically endangered creatures – which resemble miniature turquoise dragons, can grow up to 6ft long and, in the wild, are believed to live for more than 60 years – are unique to Grand Cayman.

“It’s ugly and deeply shocking,” said the programme’s director Fred Burton at the time of the attack. “These were some of our most high-profile and loved captive iguanas.”

One of the dead, named Pedro, who was described by senior iguana warden John Marotta as “the bluest of the blues”, and was the animal that was introduced to Prince Edward, a keen supporter of the programme, on his 2007 tour of the islands.

When I visited the conservation centre in June, the sense of loss was still palpable.

“We believe that someone broke into the facility with a dog but the animals died of massive trauma, not of dog attack,” said Marotta, who is a chef by profession but has been working at the facility for three years.

“The silver lining to the dark cloud of the attack on the animals is that it has created a lot of national and international interest in the breeding programme. Now, most of the adults have been sponsored and we are fielding queries everyday.”

According to Marotta, blue iguanas, which are by nature vegetarian, inhabited the island for around 3m years with no natural predators.

However, the past 60 years alone have seen the introduction of rats, cats and dogs – not to mention a massive increase in both the human population and the number of cars on the island (iguanas like to sunbathe on tarmac roads and are frequently run over).

Add the fragmentation of their natural habitat due to land development and it is not surprising that the numbers have reached a critical level.

“Historically, they would live in the bush and would bury their eggs where the bush meets the beach – right where the roads were built on the island,” explained Marotta.

These are solitary animals by design. A roaming male would have a territory of about 30 acres, a female only one or two. The breeding season – which is when their blue colour is at its most intense – generally last from the end of February to beginning of May, and the eggs take 10 weeks to hatch. Here, we make sure that we know where the females have laid so that we can dig the eggs up and incubate them.”

It is difficult to describe exactly how extraordinary these beasts are in the flesh. It really like walking with dinosaurs. They vary in colour from grey to a vivid blue, have remarkable black feet and red eyes.

According to Burton, as well as being highly intelligent, blue iguanas possess acute hearing and colour vision, have highly evolved senses of taste and smell, and enjoy complicated social lives. They are, by nature, rampantly promiscuous.

Their closest relative is the brown iguana (Cyclura nubile caymanensis), which live on Grand Cayman’s sister islands, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, and is in turn a sub-species evolved from the Cuban iguana (Cyclura nubile).

At present, the facility contains 104 caged blue iguanas of varying ages and 40 adults of breeding age.

Pairs are selectively mated, as the aim is to keep the gene pool as broad as possible. A healthy female can lay anything up to 24 eggs – although the average is closer to 10 – and the programme currently has a 90 per cent rate of successful hatchings.

“Ultimately, we want at least 1,000 free-roaming animals in the wild,” Marotta said.

At that point they will go from critically endangered to endangered, and the wild populations in the Botanic Park and the Salina Reserve will be self-sustaining.

“What we really need is a third site – at least 500 acres of viable property for them to roam on.

The breeding programme is successful – we are hatching 150 eggs every year. Now our biggest problem is where we are going to put the hatchlings when they are released.”

As well as the National Trust of the Cayman Islands and the International Reptile Conservation Foundation, one of the programme’s main supporters is the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, which is based on Jersey, and whose mission is to save wild animals from extinction.

It is incredible to think that in 1991, when Fred Burton established the recovery programme, there were estimated to be less than 25 blue iguanas left in the wild. Today, thanks entirely to his team and the programme’s success, these unique creatures really do have a future.

Blue Iguanas at a glance:

* The Grand Cayman blue iguana is the most endangered iguana in the world. There are only 10-25 left in the wild
* They can live for more than 60 years
* They eat flowers and fruit, and need shelter for living and soil to dig their nests in
* They have thick scaly skin, strong teeth and jaws and powerful digging claws
* They lie in the sun to get warm and increase their energy levels. As they get warmer they change from grey to blue.
* The blue colour also intensifies during the mating season