A survey of Refuge Cay, a mangrove island near Port Royal within Kingston Harbour which is an important nesting site of the regionally endangered Brown Pelican, was conducted by BirdLife Jamaica as part of their Earth Day activities celebrated on April 22.

The exercise was planned to draw attention to the plight of the harbour’s approximately 150 nesting Pelicans that form a sizable portion of the region’s Pelican population.

A spokesman for BirdLife Jamaica, the island’s only organisation specifically concentrating on the conservation of birds and their habitats, noted that in recent decades, Caribbean Pelicans have been in trouble owing to similar factors which have resulted in the demise of the species in North America.

Environmental contaminants, such as DDT and its metabolites, among other pesticides and Mercury (Hg) have been responsible for reproductive failures across the range of the species. In the Caribbean, this has been compounded by wide-scale human disturbance and loss of their coastal roosting and nesting habitat when mangrove areas are destroyed.

The University of the West Indies and BirdLife Jamaica are to develop a collaborative project to study the harbour’s Pelican population to determine their survival, population numbers, and how the condition of Kingston Harbour is affecting the nesting birds.

Kingston Harbour, the world’s seventh largest natural harbour, in spite of its polluted condition, is an important site for many species of seabirds including a number of migratory species, many of which are also listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Pelican details

* Of a total 21 seabird species nesting in the West Indies, 6 are considered to be “Critically Endangered”, 3 are “Endangered”, 4 are “Vulnerable”, and 2 species “Near Threatened”. That is, more than half of the region’s nesting seabird species are of current conservation concern.

* Jamaica has a number of regionally important colonies of nesting seabirds associated with many of the cays within its territorial waters such as the cays of the Morant and Pedro Banks, the Port Royal and Portland Bight Cays.

* BirdLife Jamaica, the only local organization specifically interested in the conservation of birds and their habitats, is the Jamaican partner of BirdLife International.

* BirdLife International is a global alliance of conservation organisations working in more than 100 countries who, together, are the leading authority on the status of birds, their habitats and the issues and problems affecting bird life.