In Celebration of World ReWilding Day, the Nonsuch Expeditions have joined the Global Rewilding Alliance to showcase the ground-breaking Ecological Restoration effort started by Dr. David Wingate 65 years ago, which continues on under his successor Warden Jermey Madeiros and the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, to share lessons learned, and support other rewilding efforts from around the World.
To follow is a message from Jeremy as can be seen in the attached video:
“So we're out on Nonsuch Island with JP Rouja and Haley from BioQuest, and it just so happens it's the 20th of March and today is: World ReWilding Day.
Nonsuch Island is one of the earliest examples of rewilding on the planet. Of course, back then we called it Ecological Restoration but now it's phrased as ReWilding, and it's actually about 65 years since it started, making it one of the longest lasting ones.
Among many other things, it's included the planting of over 16,000 native and endemic plants to re-establish a native indigenous forest cover on the 16 acre Nonsuch Island Nature Reserve.
Whereas before this started, it was a completely barren desert island with only dead cedars and crabgrass and not much else growing on it.
So everything you see, was planted by either: Dr. David Wingate, myself, various volunteer groups, and my work crew.
Many other projects that all went into the Nonsuch Island rewilding included:
the re-introduction of the Yellow Crown Night Heron to Bermuda from chicks that were sourced in Tampa Bay, Florida.
the re-introduction of the West Indian Top Shell, which is now once again, after a century and a half of being absent from Bermuda, was re-introduced from the Turks and Caicos Islands, and now it's found island-wide in the intertidal zone.
the protection of skinks and the preservation of the only (Nonsuch) population that seems to be really stable in Bermuda right now.
And of course the real centerpiece of the rewilding has been finally, in the last 20 years, the return of Bermuda's national bird, the endemic and critically endangered Bermuda Petrel or “Cahow”, to Nonsuch Island, because for nearly 400 years, it was confined to four half-acre rocks like Green Island, past the south tip of Nonsuch.
They are so small that in a hurricane, they go deeply underwater, they are 18 feet at their highest point, and imagine them under the impact of 25 to 30 foot waves during a hurricane, of which we've had 18 damaging ones in the last 30 years.
So I guess this is symbolic.
There are now, 40 pairs that are nesting on Nonsuch Island because of a Translocation Project moving chicks from those islands to these artificial nests on Nonsuch, and then taking over as the foster parent, feeding them daily, measuring their growth, and then letting them imprint on the island before they fly out to sea, and then waiting three to six years for them to mature and return.
The first ones returned 2009, four years after we started moving them, and the first chick was produced, name of Somers, after Sir George Somers on the 400th anniversary of the SeaVenture shipwreck, we didn't plan that, it just happened, it was serendipity.
And now, 16 years later, we have gone from one pair producing one chick, to 40 pairs producing this year, we think, about 24 chicks.
So I couldn't be happier with how the whole project is happening and how it's adding immeasurably to the Nonsuch ReWilding project.
We've been able to check all of the Cahow nests over the last couple of days in this part of the colony.
It's, I think, an indication of how fast this colony is growing, that it's taken longer and longer to do, as there's so many chicks now.
I remember when we had just one or two chicks and how excited we were, and that wasn't that long ago, it's only about a dozen years ago.
So very it's a very positive project, and when you're involved with a really successful project like this, where the species is responding so well to the management work that we're doing for it, it's it's a very encouraging and uplifting thing.
And I as a biologist, to have worked with such a fascinating species that we're still teaching us all sorts of things about the oceanic ecosystem.
So happy World ReWilding Day to everybody on a beautiful spring Bermuda full day.”