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The Blue Iguana Recovery Program is a partnership of local and
international conservation groups, who share a commitment to ensure the
survival of the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana. In addition to these long-term
partners, the Program is extremely fortunate in receiving financial and
volunteer support from local and international corporations, along with
service clubs, local government agencies, and many private individuals.
We thank them graciously for their involvement, and hope others will be
inspired by their example.
Partners
The History
and Progress
It all began in 1938, when the
late Bernard C. Lewis from the Institute of Jamaica, joined an Oxford
University Biological Expedition to the Cayman Islands. With difficulty
Lewis collected two Blue Iguanas, a male and a female, which were later
lodged with the British Museum (Natural History). Chapman Grant, in a
monograph published in 1940, formally described the Blue Iguana for the
first time.
Fifty years later, a British researcher was commissioned by the Cayman
Islands Government to carry out a survey of the remaining Blue Iguana
population. Roger Avery, in his report in 1988, came to a very similar
conclusion. In two weeks of systematic searching in the east interior of
Grand Cayman, he glimpsed only three iguanas. It was that same year that
the National Trust for the Cayman Islands was formed.
A fruitful collaboration between the Trust and the US National Zoo began
in 1991, when the Zoos' then curator of reptiles, Dale Marcellini,
visited Cayman and happened upon the Trust's new Blue Iguana breeding
facility. With funding from Friends of the National Zoo, the Trust and
zoo intern Kevin Gould began searching for clues on where the last of
Cayman's Blue Iguanas might be found.
Answers came from the farming community of East End, and by 1993 a study
site with up to five wild iguanas was yielding the first information
about population density, threats, diet, behaviour, and breeding in the
wild.
In 1995 Kevin Gould working with the Trust's Blue Iguana program
director Fred Burton, estimated that there were approximately 150 Blue
Iguanas still surviving in the wild.
In December 2001, Burton commenced a new survey to assess changes over
the past 6 years, to better characterize the area and habitat occupied
by the relic population, and to assess the potential for establishing a
protected area specifically for the Blue Iguanas. The results were a
shock: less than 25 individuals were estimated to remain from the
original wild population.
This news focused attention on the small released population which the
Blue Iguana Recovery Program has established in the QE II Botanic Park.
This group of about 30 individuals is now breeding successfully. In
2002-3 University of Tennessee Master's student Rachel Goodman studied
home ranges, habitat use and territorial interactions of this group. Her
work yielded information which helped us assess the area of wild habitat
which must ultimately be protected and managed to support a restored
population of some 1,000 wild Blue Iguanas.
Current and Future Goals
The Blue Iguana Recovery Program
is now breeding and rearing over 80 Blue Iguanas a year, with the
potential to release over 80 two-year-olds annually into protected
areas.
With the QE II Botanic Park now
near its carrying capacity limit for Blue Iguanas, the Program is now
restoring a second wild population, in the National Trust’s Salina
Reserve. Longer term, additional managed Blue Iguana habitat will be
needed, to reach a genetically stable population size in the wild.
From volunteer beginnings the
work will soon require a small core team of professionals, requiring a
matching income stream. If we can build sustainable economic activities
benefiting the Blues, a high profile image for the species, keystone
grants and steady science-based conservation work, we firmly believe we
can save the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana. This is one species the world
need not lose.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
www.blueiguana.ky
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