Nonsuch Expeditions wins international award
Technology-based conservation organisation Nonsuch Expeditions has been given a prestigious international award to help further its work — including the protection of the endangered cahow.
It has received the Chairman’s Award from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund for the ongoing conservation efforts with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Nonsuch Island, in St George’s.
The fund provides hundreds of smaller grants each year to those doing important fieldwork and only a handful are selected for the Chairman’s Award.
Nicolas Heard, acting director-general of the Conservation Fund, said: “This particular project was selected for the Chairman’s Award by the members of MBZ Fund Advisory Board on the basis of its ambitiously realistic conservation objectives applied to a critically threatened species, the Bermuda Petrel, and its associated nesting habitat.”
Nonsuch Expeditions has supported and showcased DENR’s conservation efforts for the past 17 years. This includes work with the critically endangered, endemic Bermuda Petrel, also known as the cahow.
The cahow was thought to be extinct for more than 330 years until 17 pairs were discovered nesting on remote rocks in Castle Harbour in the 1950s.
A pioneering recovery programme initiated by David Wingate and later, Mr Wingate’s successor Jeremy Madeiros, has resulted in their numbers increasing to 165 pairs.
JP Rouja, founder, and “cahow champion” for the Nonsuch Expeditions, assists Mr Madeiros, providing conservation technology and media support for the programmes.
The team finds technological solutions to conservation challenges and collaborates with global partners to source and deploy solutions, developing novel custom technologies when necessary.
The CahowCam project enabling audiences around the world to peek inside the cahows’ underground burrows by way of livestreaming video cameras was one of Nonsuch Expedition’s signature projects.
The project also allows for increased scientific understanding of the birds from round-the-clock observations of their nesting habits and the crowd sourcing of observation and data collection.
The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund grant will support Nonsuch Expeditions’ ongoing efforts.
It will also help to launch and expand several other activities, all of which are presently underfunded.
It is hoped this international recognition will attract further, much needed support.
Following on from producing the reference genome of the cahow with local partner BioQuest, a Bermuda based NGO leveraging genomics for conservation in 2023, the grant will allow the team to initiate the first phase of a follow-on genomic population study of the cahow, which will greatly enhance the management of the species.
The ongoing maintenance and installation of an AI powered, rodent detecting camera trap platform on Nonsuch Island that was installed in 2023 with technical support from the Nature Conservancy, with the AI being trained to identify rodents, which are a massive threat to nesting cahows and Nonsuch biodiversity overall.
These traps capture thousands of images on the island, which are uploaded to the cloud where a custom AI is being trained to determine if rats have been detected, allowing for quick response to protect the nesting sites of the vulnerable birds.
The funding will also support the installation of a new batch of artificial cahow burrows.
These are each made up of 600 to 800lbs of concrete, which is traditionally mixed by hand then carried in buckets to the remote islands, which the grant will help accelerate through the use of a barge to produce a first batch.
It will also help support the ongoing production of short-form videos shot weekly throughout the nesting season that are used for education and global public outreach.
To learn more, watch the Livestreams and follow the project visit: www.nonsuchisland.com
https://www.instagram.com/nonsuchexpeditions/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-nonsuch-expeditions/
• Information provided by Nonsuch Expeditions
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