Forum News 53 has been published. (All published newsletters can be accessed here.) It includes the announcement, by popular demand across the territories, of UKOTCFs 6th conference and 1st online, and the welcome news of a new member organisation, the Manx Wildlife Trust. Several articles report major progress on conservation initiatives which UKOTCF started or has long been involved with: the recovery of the Caicos pine devastated by introduced pests; the designation of the Tristan da Cunha marine protected area; the identification of 11 insect species new to science, 6 endemic to Montserrat, by UKOTCF-coordinated work; and the first online Inter-Island Environment Meeting for the Channel Islands. More sadly, UKOT personnel reflect, in the report on the Island Summit, on the disadvantages of UK leaving the EU including the loss of BEST funding (which UKOTCF and its French and Dutch equivalent umbrella bodies managed to get initiated after several years of lobbying more than a decade ago); and we mourn the loss of our long-term friend and colleague, Paul Hoetjes, stalwart of conservation in the Dutch Caribbean.
On more recently starting items, we report: the welcome news of UKOTCF putting a team of volunteers in beach-cleaning in touch with the SBA Administration in Cyprus; the success of Bermuda’s endemic snail recovery; good news on blue whales at South Georgia; and outline the climate-change emergency declared in Gibraltar; as well as reviewing a new book on birds in the UKOTs.
The messages in the latter also bring us to other reminders of major issues still needing attention, with articles on: the invasives-relevant continuing rapid devastation of coral-reefs in the Caribbean and the urgent need for the effective cures found to be applied; shipwreck at Gough Island World Heritage Site; effects of climate-change in the swamping of Caribbean shores by Sargassum and the South-Georgia-sized iceberg threatening South Georgia’s hugely important wildlife – both of which issues may be beyond cure on present evidence.
A news-filled issue, which we hope that you enjoy – and are stirred to action by!