Despite once coming precariously close to extinction, the Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus seychellensis) is now thriving on five islands in the Seychelles thanks to an intensive conservation and monitoring programme dedicated to this tiny bird’s recovery.
In the 1960s, the population of the Seychelles warbler plummeted alarmingly to just 26 individuals, all of which were confined to Cousin Island, a small granitic island in the Indian Ocean. In a bid to save this diminutive warbler, BirdLife International purchased Cousin Island in 1968, turning it from a degraded coconut plantation into the world's first internationally owned-reserve.
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Run by Nature Seychelles, the Cousin Island Special Reserve today holds a healthy population of over 300 warblers. Over the last two decades, additional populations of the warbler have also been established on Cousine, Aride and Denis Islands.
A fifth population
Late last year, in December 2011, a fifth population of the warbler was established on Frégate Island, a privately-owned luxury resort.
59 warblers were transferred from Cousin Island to Frégate Island as part of a project to start a fifth successful breeding population – a remarkable success for a species that was only recently considered to be one of the rarest birds in the world.
Frégate Island, like Cousin, has been restored over many years, is rat free, and is also free of mynah birds and other invasive species which may compete with and harm native birds.
The warbler translocation project is being led by Nature Seychelles in partnership with the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK), the Seychelles Warbler Research Group (a collaboration between the Universities of East Anglia and Sheffield in the UK, and the University of Groningen, Netherlands) and Frégate Island Private.
Article continues: http://blog.arkive.org/2012/01/good-news-for-the-seychelles-warbler/
