The start of the new year is still a very busy time on Cousin island.

At the moment we are still busy with turtles emerging to nest but we also have our hands full with hatchlings emerging and monitoring the nests that were laid earlier in the season. At the moment we also have a number of seabird species arriving on the island for nesting. Fairy terns and White tailed tropic birds both nest in their greatest numbers during the current season on the island. As soon as most of the birds appear to have laid their eggs the wardens will attempt to conduct the seabird census to determine just how many pairs of seabirds are using the island to nest.

At the moment most of the fairy terns seem to have eggs although many more are arriving each day. The fairy tern doesn’t actually build a nest but lays its eggs right on the branch or any slightly flat area. The parents take it in turns to incubate and guard the egg. Eggs that are left unguarded can easily be pushed off the branch by hungry skinks. Once the chicks hatch they have to hang on to the branch but they have very large feet to help them with this while they wait patiently for their parents to return from sea with a mouthful of fish.

The other birds arriving on the island at the moment include white tailed tropic birds and brown noddies. This time of year is not the busiest or most crowded on Cousin as far as seabirds go. During June and July the lesser noddies also breed and pairs can be seen building nests on almost every branch and things get very crowded.

While a lot of the work I do is involved with looking after the monitoring on Cousin, I also work on some projects on the main island of Mahe. I first came to Seychelles to study the tiny endemic frogs that are found on Mahe and Silhouette. These are the only 2 islands in the world that these frogs call home. Recently the Zoological Society of London launched its EDGE amphibians web site which is a follow up to its EDGE mammals site.

Almost half of the worlds known amphibian species are declining. In an attempt to highlight and help the worlds endangered amphibians the ZSL has compiled a list of the worlds 100 most threatened and evolutionarily distinct amphibians. Seychelles is home to 13 species of amphibians, including an endemic family of frogs, the Sooglossidae, and 6 species of caecilians. Like many of the amphibians on the list the Sooglossids, along with the caecilians in Seychelles, receive only limited conservation attention. A lack of resources and support means that monitoring of these animals relies on project funding.

For the Sooglossid species much information about their basic biology and ecology remains unknown as money and resources to study these animals can be scarse and their tiny size makes studying them even harder. The small metamorphs of Gardiner’s frog does not need water and it goes through the tadpole stage inside the egg, hatching out as a tiny frog the size of a grain of rice.

Nature Seychelles is continuing to monitor the distribution and abundance of this species as well as the other amphibians found on Mahe. Hopefully detailed monitoring will mean that any change in abundance and distribution can be detected and ensure the continued survival of this tiny beast and its close relatives.

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Cousin Island is a granitic island covering 27 hectares. It became the world’s first internationally owned-reserve in 1968 and it was afforded further protection when it was designated a Special Reserve in 1974. The reserve is managed by Nature Seychelles, a local conservation organization that employs local staff and brings benefits local communities through eco-tourism. Conservation activities include monitoring of the island’s biodiversity, research, re-introduction of endangered species such as the Seychelles Magpie Robin, ecotourism and education

I am the Science coordinator for Nature Seychelles and together with Eric Blais who is our new Conservation Officer on Cousin Island Special Reserve I undertake the supervision of all the monitoring and research we undertake. Eric and I decided to do this to tell you about the spectacular biodiversity here, and what we are doing to protect it.

There’s lots happening. The turtle nesting season has just started and this is special - today three of the seven existing species of marine turtles are critically endangered, three are endangered and the status of the seventh remains unknown. Cousin Island Special Reserve is the largest nesting site for the endangered Hawksbill turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata, in the Western Indian Ocean. We will tell you all about the breeding activities as well as topics of a wider context touching on other activities - when the turtles are not nesting on Cousin.

The island is really special. It supports populations of endangered land birds and large colonies of breeding seabirds, while the surrounding Marine Protected Area holds over 250 species of fish. I hope this blog encourages you to participate in conservation here on Cousin Island.

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