Lorraine’s work experience travel log

This week myself, Rona, Norisha, Angela and Clarisha went out to La Gigi Mangrove on Picard to conduct a trial monitoring survey of three mangrove plots to practice implementing the new monitoring protocol before the South East Monitoring starts next weekend at DJL. With the upcoming planned eradication of cats and rats on Aldabra, SIF is undertaking monitoring to fill gaps in our knowledge of species and species groups within the ecosystem, especially those likely to be impacted – positively or negatively – by the eradication. Mangroves, and their associated fauna, are essential to ecosystem health and a key habitat, covering 1700 ha of Aldabra. Rats on Aldabra are known to thrive in mangroves, with reports that they are reaching larger sizes, breeding all year round and showing higher survivorship in this habitat. This means they are therefore likely to be having a major impact on the mangrove ecosystem. Monitoring faunal species composition, abundance and richness will give the...

At the end of June (29th) Seychelles national day marks the country's independence from the United Kingdom in 1976. This year this public holiday fell on a Monday and the President declared the Tuesday a public holiday as well so we had an extra day off that week. On the Saturday (27th) everyone joined together for ‘Station Clean’ which happens on a Saturday morning between 8am – 12pm. Everyone divided to different parts of the station to prepare for National day. On Sunday myself, Rona, Andy and Joe had a lovely afternoon at a place called Anse Var, it is about a 40 minute walk from Station and has a beach hut area and a lovely little beach. It was my first time going and I had a lovely day. I took my hammock, my book and a packed lunch. Joe and Andy cooked a fish over a fire and had it with chicken noodles they had made. For Seychelles National Day Clarisha had organised a sports day for us all to participate in. We had all bought a few random items from the shop to...

In June we’ve been prepping for the upcoming seasonal monitoring which will take place throughout the dry season (South East). This is estimated to be around April – October but we’ve still been getting a bit of rain every so often so we haven’t been given the go ahead on starting the monitoring just yet. As I mentioned in my last blog we are currently in a Pre RaCE (Rat & Cat) Eradication time frame. On the Atoll there are currently invasive rats brought to the islands by humans and also cats (Only found on Grand Terre) which have a huge impact on the natural biodiversity balance. There are plans to begin an eradication (but its is a huge undertaking to eradicate species, resource wise, time wise and financially). There are also risks to native wildlife that come with doing things such as baiting etc. so there are lots of things to consider. A RaCE team have been on Aldabra for the past few years conducting feasibility studies which they finished in March and have since left ...