“The Last Survivors” is a project intended to help protect two of the last remaining Caribbean endemic land mammals: the Hispaniolan solenodon and the Hispaniolan hutia.
The Last Survivors website raises awareness of the last surviving Caribbean endemic land mammals and focusses conservation attention on these valuable but highly threatened species.
Before humans arrived, around 120 species of land mammal (excluding bats) occurred in the Caribbean region, but many have now gone extinct, some very recently, with possibly only 15 surviving today.
For two of the “Last Survivors”, the Hispaniolan solenodon and Hispaniolan hutia, a Darwin-Initiative funded project was launched in the Dominican Republic in October 2009. It is a collaborative effort between Dominican and UK partners, led by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. Its goal is to conduct field research on these poorly known species to assess their status, identify their conservation needs, to develop monitoring tools and to plan their long-term conservation.
Find out more at thelastsurvivors.org.
[Image: thelastsurvivors.org]
