Over at The Last Survivors blog Joe Nuñez-Miño provides an update on the progress of the project for the conservation of two unique and endangered Caribbean land mammals, the Hispaniolan hutia and the Hispaniolan solenodon:
The team attended the VII Congress of Caribbean Biodiversity which was held at the “Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (UASD)” at the start of February. It offered us the opportunity to present and share our work with the wider scientific and conservation community from the Caribbean region. It was great to get to hear about other projects working in this part of the world and it was particularly exciting to see so many young people in attendance at the congress. It is the younger generation that we need to empower in order to continue all the ongoing conservation efforts that are going on.
As part of this empowering process we were very privileged to be invited to the Punta Cana International School where we gave talks to over 150 students ranging very widely in age (from 7 through to 16). A small group of older students came out into the forest to get first hand experience of the work we do including the setting and collecting of our camera traps. Unfortunately they also experienced the frustration of not being successful in capturing any images of solenodon or hutia but then that is the nature of working with these elusive, shy and nocturnal creatures. None the less, there was great feedback from the students most of which had not even heard of these two special mammals.
Further talks have also been done at a village around Bahoruco National Park although some were rather impromptu. A video produced by a Brazilian TV crew was shown at the same village and proved very popular with the local community.
Our own infomercial films are coming along and we hope they will be ready for public viewing very shortly indeed. Making them has proven to be quite a challenge for all of us and Daniela Rusowsky, along with the rest of the team, have put a lot of work in to creating them.
For more information about the project, visit thelastsurvivors.org (or, en español, losultimosobrevivientes.org) or take a look at the project’s regularly updated Facebook page. You can also follow Joe Nuñez-Miño on Twitter.
The Last Survivors project has been mentioned several times previously on Green Antilles: Mammals and amphibians on the EDGE of existence, The Last Survivors: blogging the project, The Last Survivors: seeking Solenodons, and The Last Survivors.
[Image: the Biodiversity Heritage Library via the Last Survivors project on Facebook]
