São Tomé – a heart-felt report from the field

[Posted on behalf of Norbert Schaffer, Head of International Policy and Species Recovery]

And brilliant it was!  A day I will never forget.  The most memorable thing was not the tropical rain forest (completely untouched primary forest, and secondary forest after re-growth).  Not the torrential rain for hours, taking the word “downpour” to a new dimension (on top of the mountains in São Tomé it rains 6,000mm annually, eight times the drenching in England and seemingly trying to come down all in one day).  Not the walk in the forest, wet literally to the underpants, passing enormous trees with trunks of incredible sizes and shapes, all designed to stabilise the trees in the wet, soft soil.  Not even pushing and pulling our 4x4 for three hours after it got stuck on the track inevitably (twice!)  No, the most memorable moment was seeing the elusive dwarf olive ibis, the rarest bird species, probably the rarest creature I have ever seen.

Endemic to São Tomé, and sadly of course critically endangered, it was once even considered extinct until Phil Atkinson rediscovered it in 1990, his name now forever associated with this bird.  There are no more than 250 individuals, probably fewer, and the bird only lives here on São Tomé.  It is difficult not to get emotional at a moment like this - back in our hotel, I wrote an email about the unique dwarf olive ibis, its unique forest on its unique island to our daughters Anna and Lisa, eleven and twelve years old.  They felt my excitement: “One day we want to go there and see it” they replied instantly. 

One day…the island will surely still be there, it has been for 15 million years, a forest of some kind will probably exist, but even with a small bit of bad luck the dwarf olive ibis may not.  By the time the 2016 Olympics take place in Brazil, the dwarf olive ibis might have gone forever, reduced to a description in a bird book, and a faint memory of those of us who had the privilege to see it before it went extinct.  How will we explain this to Anna and Lisa and all the other Annas and Lisas, who might want to see it one day?  The ibis has been on São Tomé for thousands, maybe millions of years, and yet its habitat (also the home of several other endemic and globally threatened species), described by scientists as one of the most important pieces of land for biological diversity on the planet, might soon be converted into an oil palm plantation so that we can put eco-friendly fuel in our vehicles.  Utterly absurd.  Yes, it is difficult not to get emotional with a situation like this.