Cayman Islands
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Important Bird Areas in the Caribbean – Cayman Islands ■ CAYMAN ISLANDS LAND AREA 262 km2 ALTITUDE 0–43 m HUMAN POPULATION 46,600 CAPITAL George Town IMPORTANT BIRD AREAS 10, totalling 67 km2 IMPORTANT BIRD AREA PROTECTION 22% BIRD SPECIES 222 THREATENED BIRDS 4 RESTRICTED-RANGE BIRDS 4 PATRICIA E. BRADLEY, MAT COTTAM (CAYMAN ISLANDS DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT, DOE), GINA EBANKS-PETRIE (DOE) AND JONI SOLOMON (DOE) Malportas Pond, part of the Central Mangrove Wetland IBA on Grand Cayman. (PHOTO: KRISTAN D. GODBEER/DOE) INTRODUCTION accounted for significant losses of terrestrial and wetland habitat. The Cayman Islands, a UK Overseas Territory, comprises The islands are sheltered by the Greater and Lesser Antilles three low-lying islands: Grand Cayman (197 km²), Little from the north-east trade winds and have a tropical marine Cayman (28 km²) and Cayman Brac (38 km²). These emergent climate with two distinct seasons: a wet season from May to limestone bluffs are situated along the submerged Cayman November and a relatively dry season from December to Ridge, which is continuous with the Sierra Maestra mountains April. Damaging storms strike the islands at a frequency of of south-eastern Cuba. Cayman Brac is the closest to Cuba approximately once every 10 years. The habitats of the being c.250 km south, and is also the easternmost of the Cayman Islands may be broadly categorized into four Cayman Islands. Little Cayman is separated from Cayman vegetation types: wetlands, coastal, dry forest, woodland and Brac by a 7-km wide channel, with Grand Cayman located shrubland, and man-modified areas. Wetland habitats include some 140 km to the south-west. It was not until 1741 that mangrove swamps, saline lagoons and ponds, wet grassland, permanent settlements were established on Grand Cayman. freshwater ponds, brackish sedge and Typha swamps. The The territory’s economy changed and grew dramatically in marine mangrove ecosystem includes black mangrove the 1960s with the advent of international banking and Avicennia germinans, white mangrove Laguncularia racemosa, tourism. The Cayman Islands are one of the largest banking red mangrove Rhizophora mangle, and buttonwood centres in the world, and the tourism industry now caters to Conocarpus erectus. Coastal habitats include fringing reefs, over two million visitors each year. This recent economic boom shoreline, littoral woodland and shrubland and marine bluffs and population increase has placed a burgeoning pressure on (cliffs). The shoreline includes red mangrove, sandy coral the natural environment. Historically, forests were exploited beach, cobble and Ironshore, a Pleistocene conglomerate that for timber and fuel. Agriculture is also well established, overlaps the bluff limestone as a low elevation coastal terrace. especially in those areas supporting pockets of wind-blown While most of the shoreline is characteristically of extremely soil deposits. More recently, clearance of vegetation for low elevation, the high bluffs of Grand Cayman and Cayman the extraction of aggregate and urban development has Brac provide nesting habitat for seabirds. Dry forest and 109 Important Bird Areas in the Caribbean – Cayman Islands shrubland dominate the karstic limestone which comprises the interior of the islands. Extensive hardwood forests once covered the drier eastern regions of Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac bluff. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, most of the mature trees had been felled. The three islands differ in a number of features. Grand Cayman supports c.96% of the total population of the country, the majority of whom live on the western half of the island. North Sound (in western Grand Cayman) is a north-facing shallow marine bay extending for c.100 km2 and is perhaps the most significant topographical feature. Originally bordered by mangrove swamps to the west, south and east, development has severely reduced fringing vegetation along the southern and western portions. The bed of the Sound has also been extensively dredged, to facilitate the passage of marine craft and to provide fill for development. Grand Cayman reaches its maximum elevation, 18 m, in the Mastic Forest clearance on the edge of the Mastic Reserve IBA, Grand Forest of North Side. Cayman, shows the need for conservation zoning within the Little Cayman is the least populated of the islands and South island’s development plan. (PHOTO: KRISTAN D. GODBEER/DOE) Town (Blossom Village) is the main settlement. New roads, small hotels and condominiums have been constructed to meet during the 1932 storm. The dominant topographic feature of the growing demands of the tourism industry, the main Cayman Brac is a dolostone plateau, known locally as “the attractions for which are scuba diving and nature tourism. The Bluff’. Outcropping in the west, the Bluff rises slowly to the south coast comprises fringing reefs, with a rubble ridge forming north-east, attaining a height of 46 m before terminating in shallow, protected sounds. Coastal areas, along with the vertical marine cliffs. western half of the island, consist of a platform of Ironshore formation rock overlain by beach ridge vegetation, mangrove ■ Conservation swamps and saline coastal lagoons. The limestone central bluff The Department of Environment (DOE) of the Cayman rises to a height of 14 m in the area known as Sparrowhawk Islands Government and the National Trust for the Cayman Hill, the maximum elevation on the island. Islands, the only environmental NGO in the territory, are the Cayman Brac supports a population of c.1,600. The two organisations responsible for advocacy and conservation majority are centred along the comparatively low-lying provisions. The Crown (the Cayman Islands Government) and northern coastal shelf, a situation that has, in the past, exposed the Trust, jointly or separately, are owners of all protected people to the devastating impacts of high seas, most notably land in the islands. The DOE has established, and monitors, several marine parks around the islands, and has drafted Dry forest within the Bluff Forest IBA on Cayman Brac. legislation (currently pending) to enable the establishment of (PHOTO: KRISTAN D. GODBEER/DOE) a series of terrestrial national parks. This draft conservation legislation, the National Conservation Law, was first proposed in 2000, but remains “on the table”. It urgently needs to be enacted as it would provide the framework for profound changes in conservation management, including introducing regulations and enforcement across the spectrum, from the creation of national parks to control of the importation of exotic species. The Development Plan for Grand Cayman 2002 is in the appellate process after the Government removed the proposed conservation and nature tourism zones from the Plan. The DOE, the National Trust and many private individuals are appealing this decision. The Sister Islands (Little Cayman and Cayman Brac) have decided not to implement a Development Plan, but instead have proposed a Sustainable Management Plan, which is currently in first draft. This Plan does not make provision for any system of protected areas. Together, these gaps make conservation planning difficult and leave costly land purchase as the only route to conserve environmentally important sites. The Cayman Islands Government Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) was established in 1997 through a levy of US$2–4 tax on every person departing the country. One of the main purposes of the fund is the purchase of conservation land and the government has recently confirmed its intent to use the EPF to purchase land in the Barkers area on Grand Cayman, as a move towards establishing the country’s first national park. This would set a welcome precedent for further acquisitions of land for conservation on the three Islands. Combined with effective use of the EPF, enactment of the National Conservation Law would help provide the effective conservation management which the Cayman Islands’ unique biodiversity urgently needs. ■ Birds A total of 222 species of birds have been recorded from the Cayman Islands, of which 49 are breeding birds, and 173 occur 110 Important Bird Areas in the Caribbean – Cayman Islands as non-breeding (primarily Neotropical) migrants. Of the hunting, and the start up of an artificial feeding programme migrants, 97 species are recorded annually. The Cayman on Grand Cayman. Islands are a secondary Endemic Bird Area (EBA). One The Near Threatened Cuban Amazon Amazona species was historically endemic to the islands, namely the leucocephala occurs as two endemic races on the Cayman Grand Cayman Thrush Turdus ravidus, but the five other Islands, A. l. caymanensis (“Cayman Parrot”) on Grand restricted-range birds are found also in other Caribbean Cayman, with a population estimated at 1,408–1,935 birds in Endemic Bird Areas. Turdus ravidus was last recorded in 1938. 1995, and A. l. hesterna (“Brac Parrot”) on Cayman Brac, Habitat loss and storms may have contributed to its extinction, with a population estimated at 350–430. The latter previously though the exact cause of its disappearance remains unknown. occurred on Little Cayman but was extirpated sometime The other restricted-range birds include: Jamaican Oriole before 1944. The Grand Cayman population ranges Icterus leucopteryx, extirpated from the Cayman Islands throughout much of the island with subpopulations in the having been last recorded in 1968; Vitelline Warbler Dendroica forests and individual pairs breeding close to urban areas in vitellina; Thick-billed Vireo Vireo crassirostris alleni (endemic the West Bay peninsula. Its greatest threat is the ongoing subspecies), extirpated from Little Cayman but still present fragmentation and clearance of dry forest, 95% of which is on the other two islands; Yucatan Vireo Vireo magister privately owned and unprotected. The Near Threatened caymanensis (endemic subspecies), confined to Grand Vitelline Warbler D. vitellina occurs on the Swan Islands (to Cayman; and Caribbean Elaenia Elaenia martinica Honduras) and the Cayman Islands, although 97% of its caymanensis (endemic subspecies) which is common on all population is thought to be on the Cayman Islands where it is three islands.