Tiny Seychelles island coaxes bird back from brink

Cousin Island (Seychelles) (AFP) – Giant tortoises amble across Cousin Island as rare birds flit above.

The scene attests to a stunning success for BirdLife International, a conservation group that bought the tiny Seychelles isle in 1968 to save a songbird from extinction.

Thick vegetation smothers ruins that are the only reminder of the coconut and cinnamon plantations that covered the island when the group stepped in to protect the Seychelles Warbler.

Now teeming with flora and fauna and boasting white beaches, Cousin Island is firmly on the tourist map, with managers scrambling to contain visitor numbers and soften their negative environmental impact. 

More than 16,000 people visited the island in 2018, compared with 12,000 a decade earlier.

“Tourism is important for Cousin. That’s what allows us to finance the conservation projects we run here. 

“But 16,000 tourists… that was too much,” said Nirmal Shah, director of Nature Seychelles, which is charged with running the special reserve.

Before the island was in private hands, the population of Seychelles Warblers was thought to have shrunk to just 26, barely hanging on in a mangrove swamp after much of their native habitat had been destroyed. 

Read on

Getting help with the kids slows down ageing in female birds

Date:  March 21, 2019

Source:  University of Groningen

Seychelles warblers live and breed in family groups on the tiny island of Cousin. In each group, a dominant female and male reproduce. When helpers assist the with incubation and feeding of chicks, the dominant female breeders age more slowly and live longer, a study by biologists from the University of Groningen and colleagues from the Universities of East Anglia, Leeds, Sheffield, and Wageningen shows. The results, which are published in the journal Nature Communications on 21 March, indicate how cooperative breeding -- which also occurs in other species, including humans -- can increase life span.

The Seychelles warbler lives on Cousin Island in the Indian Ocean, measuring just 500 by 700 meters. Some fifty years ago, only a handful of birds survived. However, conservation efforts have led to a spectacular increase in the population, and new populations have been established by translocating birds to four other islands nearby. 'There are about one hundred breeding territories on Cousin, each with a dominant male and female and a number of subordinates, which are often the offspring of the dominant pair', explains University of Groningen biologist Martijn Hammers, lead author of the study.

Continued

Seychelles’ Cousin Island celebrates 50th anniversary success: bringing warbler back from extinction

Victoria, Seychelles | January 29, 2018, Monday @ 14:10 in Environment » CONSERVATION | By: Sharon Ernesta |Views: 1021

 (Seychelles News Agency) - Cousin Island is this year celebrating 50 years since its designation as a nature reserve and its conservation and research work.

The island’s major achievement is its work with the Seychelles warbler. This endemic bird has been downgraded from critically endangered to near threatened on IUCN’s Red List of endangered species - a first in bird conservation. 

The island special reserve is managed by Nature Seychelles, a not-for-profit organisation for environmental conservation, which is also celebrating 20 years of existence. Nature Seychelles is the island nation’s partner of BirdLife International.

BirdLife International is a global partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources.

At one time there were only 26 individuals of this bird left in the world found only on Cousin.

Read on