The UK’s wildlife overseas A stocktake of nature in our Overseas Territories Northern rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes moseleyi) Otto Plantema (pbase.com/otto1) Otto Contents Foreword 03 Executive summary 05 Introduction 07 Structure of the report and methodology 08 Results overview 11 Anguilla 16 Ascension 20 Bermuda 24 British Indian Ocean Territory 28 British Virgin Islands 32 Cayman Islands 36 Falkland Islands 40 Montserrat 44 Pitcairn Islands 48 South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 52 St Helena 57 Turks and Caicos 60 Tristan da Cunha 65 Acknowledgements 68 Appendices 70 Glossary 73 1 Kathleen Wood Kathleen Baby iguana on Turk’s head cactus. 2 Foreword The UK Overseas Territories hold biodiversity of global significance, from vast penguin colonies in the South Atlantic to tropical rainforests in the Caribbean. Some of the species and habitats present are found nowhere else on earth. This Government is proud of such rich and unique natural heritage and recognises that many of these environmental assets would be irreplaceable if lost. This Government also recognises however, that biodiversity is under increasing pressure worldwide, and the fragile ecosystems of the Territories are no exception. In our 2012 Overseas Territories White however; only 10% of endemic species Paper, the Prime Minister and Foreign have had their conservation status Secretary laid out their vision for the assessed and almost all of these are protection of natural environments of thought to be globally threatened. the Territories and the implementation Establishing the status of the remaining of effective management to the highest 90% of endemic species will be vital to international standards. This report effective prioritisation and appropriate contributes to achieving these aims, application of resources. through bringing together for the first time, a complete record of all the known I am delighted that the Foreign & species which inhabit our Territories, as Commonwealth Office has been able to well as their conservation status. fund this research and the Government looks forward to working in partnership The results are significant and confirm with Territory Governments, civil society just how valuable the Territories are; and the scientific community to build on they hold 94% of unique British species. the results of this report, and address the Identifying the conservation priorities for conservation priorities and knowledge the Territories still remains a challenge gaps it reveals. Mark Simmonds MP Minister for Africa, the Overseas Territories, Caribbean and International Energy 3 Andrew Macdonald Henderson Island World Heritage Site (Pitcairn) is home to over 55 unique species. 4 Executive summary With funding from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), the RSPB has completed the first ever stock-take of all the species known to occur on the islands of the UK Overseas Territories, and what, if anything, we know about their conservation status. The islands of the UK Overseas Territories The key findings are: are known to hold a vast wealth of • The OTs hold at least 1,500 endemic biodiversity, including more penguins than species, compared to around 90 any other nation on earth, and the world’s endemic species in the UK. This is largest coral atoll. Detailed knowledge of equivalent to 94% of known endemic this remarkable biodiversity has remained British species. both limited and widely dispersed, and global extinctions are ongoing (the last • Much of the endemic OT fauna and known OT extinction occurring as recently flora is threatened, although only 145 as 2003). The RSPB therefore completed species (9%) have ever had their global a study, between January 2013 and March conservation status assessed. Of 2014, to bring together all known species these, 111 (77%) are listed as Globally records and conservation assessments Threatened on the IUCN Red List. in one place to enable a more strategic and effective protection of this overseas • A few exceptions apart, we have limited British wildlife. knowledge about OT biodiversity (species presence, distribution, With the assistance of many individuals population size and conservation status). and organisations around the world, we Particularly lacking information are: were able to access records for more n Marine biodiversity than 28,000 native species from the n Invertebrates island OTs. Although this is a considerable n Non-vascular (“lower”) plants number, we know that there are n Lichen and fungi thousands of species still undocumented, and the knowledge we have about • We estimate that the island OTs conservation status, population sizes and still hold: distributions for most recorded species is n Around 50,000 unrecorded species negligible and certainly far behind that of n Around 2,100 undiscovered metropolitan UK. endemic species. • To date the lack of current knowledge of biodiversity in the island OTs has impeded conservation efforts. The results from this study are a vital step to address this issue strategically. 5 John Poole John King penguins, Aptenodytes patagonicus, at South Georgia. 6 Introduction In May 2013, a partnership of 25 UK conservation organisations published the State of Nature report1. The State of Nature documented declines in 60% of the 3,148 UK species for which adequate quantitative data were available. Despite lacking a similar level of knowledge for biodiversity of the UK Overseas Territories the authors noted that, “it is clear the UK’s Overseas Territories hold a wealth of wildlife of huge international significance”. Being able to assess the state of OTs biodiversity is a vital step towards better informing conservation action. Information from better-studied taxonomic The aims of this project were: groups, such as birds, show that some • To get a broad overview of the of the OTs’ wildlife is threatened with biodiversity known to occur on each global extinction. However, knowledge is of the island OTs, including endemic, lacking for most taxonomic groups and native and non-native species it is impossible to say exactly how many • To collate the number of native species Globally Threatened species are found that have been assessed using IUCN on the OTs, or indeed how many species Red List criteria occur in total. • To collate monitoring data for native species, where available The project described in this report • To identify the major knowledge gaps, takes an important step towards the in terms of species monitoring, Red better understanding of the biodiversity Listing or simply cataloguing. of the island OTs. For the first time, we have collated species records and IUCN To achieve this, for each island OT we Red List assessments for all taxonomic researched information on species groups across the island OTs and records, endemism, IUCN Red brought them together in a single place. List assessments and what, if any, This provides a stock-take of the current conservation actions or monitoring knowledge of biodiversity across the is being undertaken. A wide range of island OTs and indicates where the most data sources were used, including significant knowledge gaps are. published and unpublished literature and communications with collaborating organisations and individual experts throughout the OTs and elsewhere. 1 Burns F, Eaton MA, Gregory RD, et al. (2013) State of Nature report. The State of Nature Partnership 7 Structure of the report UK-based), asking for any information on biodiversity that had been collated The first part of the report provides an previously. From these initial starting overview of the results. We identify the points, we identified and developed a largest knowledge gaps and how current network of contacts across the globe knowledge and monitoring is biased by directly contacting research groups towards certain taxonomic groups. for more information and through other The second part of the report devotes a individuals’ personal networks. chapter to each of the island OTs, giving This approach accessed more than 600 an overview of what we know about their published papers and reports and personal biodiversity. Each chapter describes the contact with over 100 individuals2. depth of our knowledge of biodiversity, how it varies between taxonomic groups After initial species records were compiled and which species in each island OT for each island OT, they were made have been assessed against IUCN Red available to relevant experts for review. List criteria. This formed a critical step in “cleaning” taxonomically complex groups where multiple synonyms had been entered. It Methodology also allowed suggestions on where data was missing, leading to targeted data Geography searches to fill gaps. For the purposes of this project, we restricted data collection to all records Information gathered on each species within 12 nautical miles (territorial recorded as present in each island OT waters) for each island OT. Despite links included: current distribution, status in their governance, we have treated (endemic/native/alien), population counts Ascension Island, St Helena and Tristan and estimates, IUCN Red List status, date da Cunha separately, because each island of record and reference. This information group is biogeographically different. – derived from published literature and other sources – is currently stored in an This project did not collect data for the Excel database, and we are in the process British Antarctic Territory, Gibraltar or the of making this freely accessible to all. Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas. We hope that future