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Surveying wild animals day and night on Montserrat

Species conservation on Montserrat

On our conservation project, Mark, Jenny and I had to survey the island's population of reptiles and amphibians. Unlike the "batters" who patiently waited for their animals to fly to them, we had to use a different approach. We knew we wouldn't have time to survey the whole island, so we had to come up with a random technique that we hoped would give us a representative sample. We had just over 2 months to survey the 39 square miles (106 km2 ) – less than a third of the area of the Isle of Wight.

We divided the island into 1km grid squares and randomly picked one each day, and surveyed it twice: once from 7 to 11 a.m. and then again at night from 6 to 10 p.m. this was partly to try to ensure we sampled diurnal and nocturnal animals, but also because some of the diurnal animals were easier to find at night. Because we were sampling randomly we never knew where we would be working each day. One day we might be creeping around small settlements with dogs barking and curtains twitching at these mad scientists, other days we could be in a pathless jungle, an hours walk from the nearest road. These latter occasions were the most demanding. We might already have spent an hour bush bashing to get into our field area, and then we would have four hours of pushing through thick, pathless, spiky vegetation trying to spot animals. And then it had to be done all over again at night...

For me, there is something spooky about trees at night. I find them very unsettling. And nights in the jungle on Montserrat are very dark. You know the saying "it was so dark I couldn't see my hand in front of my face?" That very rarely occurs in normal life in the UK, but in Montserrat it was literally true. It also meant that if your torch failed you would not be able to find your way back to the car. So we needed a plan in case this happened. After much thought the plan was decided: you would sit down in the pitch dark and wait until daylight.

The thought of sitting in a pitch black jungle with critturs moving around me and overshadowed by trees didn't appeal at all. I carried a spare torch, spare batteries and a candle...


This is just one of the stories that inform my talk Montserrat - surviving the volcano

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