Newsletter-Issue 30-Trinity-2018

THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE
www.queens.ox.ac.uk
Aldabr a Clean-up project
Conserving an enigma
A group of Queen’s students is leading an expedition to
the remote Aldabra Atoll to remove tonnes of ocean trash
from its shores. Fellow in Biology Dr Lindsay Turnbull is a
Trustee of the Seychelles Islands Foundation (the organisation
responsible for Aldabra) and graduate student April Burt was
Scientific Coordinator there
before coming to study
for her DPhil in Effective
Management of Island
Ecosystems at Queen’s.
Together they resolved to
clean-up the site, to bring
the plight of the atoll to the
world’s attention, and to
share the story with young
people in the UK. They
have recruited a group of
six graduate students (four
ecologists and two materials
scientists) who will travel to
Aldabra in March 2019 to
work with six Seychellois
environmentalists and transform the shores of the atoll, which is
uninhabited save for a small research station. The team will also
work with UK schools and communities to inspire young people
to learn about Aldabra and minimise their use of plastic.
Described by David Attenborough as ‘one of the world’s
greatest surviving natural treasures’, Aldabra Atoll, a UNESCO
World Heritage Site, is under threat from increasing marine
plastic pollution. Aldabra has a rich and diverse ecosystem
that includes giant tortoises, flightless rails, and rare seabirds.
It is the largest raised coral atoll in the world, with the largest
population of giant tortoises worldwide, and one of the largest
nest sites for green turtles in the Indian Ocean. The atoll and its
wildlife are at great risk from the tonnes of ocean rubbish that
wash onto its shores every year. In December 2017, the handful
of conservationists stationed there collected 200 kg of waste
from just one beach in the space of three weeks.
The President of Seychelles, Danny Faure, recently shocked the
leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations with photographs
taken by the Aldabra Clean-
Up Project team of the
damage being done to the
island nation’s ecosystem by
plastic pollution and other
types of litter coming from
the rest of the world.
The projected cost of the
expedition is £150,000,
including £80,000 to
charter the cargo boat
to collect and transport
the waste 1,000km to the
main Seychelles and over
£40,000 to get the team to
Aldabra. Return flights to the
Seychelles, a specially chartered plane to Assumption Island,
and finally a boat to take the team to Aldabra, will cost around
£40,000. Once on the atoll, the team will be living frugally in a
harsh and unforgiving environment, committing all their energy
to clearing as much of the plastic and fishing debris as possible.
This is a community project led by committed young women
and men. They have raised £64,000 to date and continue to
seek sponsors and supporters to enable the expedition to go
ahead.
Please take a look at their crowdfunding site: www.queens.
hubbub.net/p/AldabraProject/ and let them know of any help or
ideas you might have to ensure this important project happens.
We wish them the best of luck!
Osprey conservation
Brittany Maxted joined Queen’s in
2015 as an undergraduate in Biological
Sciences. She has now completed her
final year and will be spearheading a
conservation project, which she has
been involved with since its inception.
Here she talks about her work and how
it aims to restore a long-lost raptor to
the South of England.
The osprey is an enigmatic bird of prey that breeds in the
UK. Every winter they migrate to West Africa where they
spend the non-breeding season living and fishing in the river
deltas of Senegal and The Gambia. At one time the osprey’s
distribution in the UK would have been widespread, spanning
from the Scottish Highlands to the South West of England.
But throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries their
population suffered a dramatic decline, as a result of egg
collecting and heavy persecution. Consequently, they became
extinct as a breeding species in Britain in 1916.
In 1956, after four decades of absence, ospreys naturally
recolonised a site at Loch Garten in Scotland and, assisted by
a concerted conservation effort, the population has since grown
to over 200 breeding pairs. However, dispersal has been slow
(the rate of expansion is estimated to be around 4km per year)
and hence most of the population is still confined to remote
areas of Scotland. At this rate it will take over a century for the
osprey to recolonise the entirety of its native range.
In order to give the species a helping hand and accelerate this
expansion, in the late 1990s a translocation project began,
moving chicks from natural Scottish nests to Rutland Water in
Leicestershire, where they were hand-raised and rereleased into
the wild. Translocation is a particularly successful conservation
method for ospreys, as individual birds are very site-faithful
and will return to the same place to breed year after year. The
Rutland project was enormously successful and facilitated
reestablishment of both English and Welsh osprey populations.
However, none of these birds have dispersed south and the
South of England remains a gaping hole in their distribution. As
a result, there is no mixing between the British and mainland
European osprey populations, which limits gene flow and
species resilience.
pens overlooking the shores of Poole Harbour for nearly three
weeks, feeding them three meals of fresh fish per day. When
they began to show signs of an eagerness to fly, we fitted them
with lightweight radio tags that would allow us to track their
movements after release. We opened the doors of the release
pens before sunrise one frosty August morning and soon had
eight healthy chicks soaring overhead and learning to fish in the
harbour’s marshy inlets. We continued to provide food until the
day the last bird left on migration in mid-September. Each chick
will have made a gruelling 5000 km journey to West Africa,
where they will spend the next few years maturing and building
strength before returning to the UK to breed. And, if and when
they return, we expect many to settle naturally in Poole Harbour
where they were raised.
Last year’s translocation was a huge success, but our work
does not stop here. This is a five-year project, with another four
years of translocations to complete. This summer, I will take
up the post of Project Manager, leading an even larger team
to raise and release another 14 chicks, plus another 12 chicks
every year for the following three years after that! I also have
further academic ambitions for the project. Following this year’s
translocation, I hope to secure funding and put together a PhD
research proposal encompassing the work of the project and
national population data to investigate the factors influencing
dispersal in this species. It is my hope to conduct this research
alongside my role as manager for the project and make use of
this valuable opportunity to study such a remarkable and elusive
species up close.
The Poole Harbour Translocation
In 2017, a project began to encourage ospreys to breed in the
south. Eight chicks were collected under licence from natural
nests in Scotland and transported down to Dorset overnight.
From this moment on they were in my care, along with a
group of dedicated volunteers, until the moment they left on
migration some two months later. We raised them in release
This project is a collaboration between the charities Birds of
Poole Harbour and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, and the
company Wildlife Windows. If you would like to contribute to
the project in any way, donations to either charity are gratefully
appreciated and will help us to continue our valuable work. You
can also follow the project on Twitter @harbourospreys.
Brittany Maxted
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