Times of the Islands Winter 2022/23

green pages newsletter of the department of environment & coastal resources
Over two decades ago I returned to Turks & Caicos
Islands from university to begin work on a UK-funded
project focusing on the North, Middle, and East Caicos
Nature Reserve, a site listed under the Ramsar Convention
on Wetlands of International Importance as a Ramsar
site. I trudged through mangrove swamps, salt marshes,
flooded forests, and one particularly bizarre and treacherous
habitat that comprised seemingly endless sinkholes
choked with tangled red mangrove and sawgrass, each
ringed by rain-eroded razor rock bedecked with poisonwood
and skin-ripping spiny box briar.
My physique at the time allowed me to sink less far
into the sulphurously putrid mud, and my end-of-day
exhaustion was markedly less than it would be now.
But for these costs, I was supplied with rare glimpses of
endangered West Indian whistling ducks, gentle slaps in
the face by dangling rubbery leaves of mahogany mistletoe,
close encounters with surprisingly curious flamingos,
and numerous scenes that astounded sight and other
senses.
We were assessing habitats based on satellite imagery
that threw coarse 30 x 30-meter pixels of colour
across habitats, using GPS units that may or may not
have been off by as much
as 50 meters, and I was
having to learn species of
plants by immediate sight
on a logarithmic learning
curve. My special interests
in reptiles and orchids
were rarely disappointed.
My appreciation for all
things green and all things
creepy was both enthralled
and tested—sometimes
simultaneously. (Having
a dragonfly attracted to
a headlamp at night is
an experience something
akin to getting hit in the
face by a metallic fairy carrying
a baby rattle.)
Through the next two
decades, I worked on various
field-based projects
focused on plants, seeds,
bats, iguanas, snakes, spiders, butterflies, beetles, birds,
mysterious cave invertebrates, historic human populations,
bush medicine, and of course the National Tree,
Caicos pine. I noted gaps in knowledge, such as whether
or not hutias still live in TCI, how extensive ranges are of
our rarest endemic plants, and what on earth is going on
with two strange populations of Encyclia orchids that key
out to a species of which they don’t fit the description.
Two years ago, my role in DECR changed, and I was
lifted from the bush to a somewhat higher position—and
while I have had more opportunity to steer the directions
projects take, the resettlement to a more desk-based job
has been both challenging and worrying. What would
become of my past work?
I needn’t have worried. This year, DECR has pushed
full-throttle into two exciting new projects that largely
build on work going back those 20 years. Both supported
by UK Government’s Darwin Plus funding scheme, these
projects seek to fill some of those knowledge gaps identified
over past courses of work.
The Darwin Plus 129 project, “Understanding
Ramsar Wetland Dynamics for Marine Conservation and
Environmental Resilience,” is using far superior tools and
This rare patch of Encyclia orchids on Middle Caicos may be a new variety, subspecies, or even species to
science.
CHRISTOPHER MAY
34 www.timespub.tc