This UKOT Day, find out how we’re helping some remarkable wildlife around the globe.
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You might be surprised to learn that most of the UK’s unique biodiversity isn’t here within our home shores – most of it is on the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs). The RSPB has a long history of working with some amazing people in these incredible places to protect and restore their often unique species and habitats. We celebrate UKOT Day, Monday 2 June, with a flavour of our work in these very special places.
The UKOTs are mainly island territories dotted around the globe – in the Atlantic, Indian and South Pacific oceans, and the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas, as well as the British Antarctic Territory.
The theme of this year’s UKOT Day is their strategic importance, and that’s easy to demonstrate when it comes to nature. The UK has 1,500 species that are unique to us, 94% of which are found on the UKOTs and nowhere else on Earth. Many of them are threatened with global extinction.
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British Virgin Islands amphibians
This Caribbean UKOT is home to three Endangered frogs and toads that the RSPB is supporting the local community to monitor, as a first step on their path to recovery.
The Virgin Islands Coqui, Virgin Islands Mute Frog and the Puerto Rican Crested Toad have all suffered from habitat loss through development, the impacts of climate change and the arrival of the invasive Cuban Tree Frog. The RSPB is supporting partners (the Jost Van Dykes Preservation Society (JVDPS) and the H V Lavitty Stott Community College) to fill in a major knowledge gap about their distribution across the archipelago. We've funded a project to begin DNA testing species across four islands, as the first step in establishing an ‘environmental DNA’ monitoring programme. This would mean we could test water samples and detect whether the frogs were present, without having to find the species themselves, which can be very challenging. Previous work was funded by the UK Government’s hugely important Darwin Plus fund, which is now under threat.
Marine Protected Areas: Oceans and skies full of species!
“Which species does your project help?” It’s a question that the RSPB teams supporting Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the UKOTs are often asked. And the answer is: thousands! These zones safeguard all the marine creatures that call them home, and the birds that depend on the fruits of the ocean for their survival.
Island communities, their governments and partners including the RSPB have worked alongside the UK Government through the Blue Belt Programme to create and support vast MPAs in our UK Overseas Territories.
In 2016, the waters of the Pitcairn, Henderson, Oeno and Ducie UKOT were safeguarded as a vast new MPA. Covering 830,000 km2, it’s home to rare deep-water corals, shallow coral reefs teeming with life, and one of the highest densities of sharks recorded anywhere on Earth. More than 95% of the global population of Murphy’s Petrel live in this UKOT, and it’s the only known breeding site in the world for the endemic Henderson Petrel.
Over in the Atlantic Ocean, Tristan da Cunha established its Marine Protection Zone in 2021. Three times the size of the UK, it’s the largest fully protected area in the Atlantic Ocean, helping to secure the future for many struggling species including the Broadnose Sevengill Shark and the Tristan Albatross.
Many conservation stories start with species in decline. Here, we’re helping to make sure pristine seas stay pristine.
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This distinctive black and yellow oriole, in the same family as the Blackbird, is the national bird of the Caribbean UKOT of Montserrat. It’s had a tough time in recent decades, losing habitat through deforestation, hurricanes and a volcanic eruption on the island. Since the volcanic activity in the mid 1990s, the RSPB has been helping to analyse data on forest birds, including the Montserrat Oriole, tracking ongoing trends to aid in their recovery. The Montserrat Oriole was downlisted from Critically Endangered to Vulnerable on IUCN’s Red List in 2016.
Montserrat is also one of five Caribbean UKOTs benefitting from an RSPB-supported biosecurity programme. The goal is to keep out invasive non-native species that threaten the island’s unique plants and animals, while equipping local teams with the knowledge and skills they need to prevent any unwanted arrivals and deal with incidents if they do occur.
The RSPB also recently helped with a project bid to support climate-smart agroforestry, which would benefit a range of species as well as the local economy.
At the heart of our conservation work on the UKOTs is ensuring that local communities reap the maximum benefit. Sometimes that’s a direct result – for example, our support for the restoration of the cloud forest on St Helena not only protects the species that live there but also the habitat that provides a large proportion of the island’s drinking water, funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. Here are some more examples of work to support local communities:
Skilling up
Building capacity and capability through training and development for local people and partners is a golden thread that runs through much of our work in the UKOTs – whether that’s sharing our own expertise or bringing in specialists in everything from conservation techniques to film-making.
A great example is the Atlantic Guardians project on Tristan da Cunha, funded by Blue Nature Alliance, which is helping to build a strong foundation for Tristan’s Marine Protection Zone. The project has created quality jobs in conservation on the island, with learning and development built in. Four teenage school-leavers took part in the Atlantic Guardians’ Young Ocean Champions programme, travelling to South Africa and the UK for several months of training in everything from powerboat driving and maintaining engines to scuba diving and marine conservation, equipping them as the future guardians of their environment.
RSPB staff specialising in financial management for international programmes have delivered finance training for UKOT communities and partners, helping them to manage current projects and paving the way for new ones.
Meanwhile, conservation staff on St Helena and Tristan da Cunha have benefitted from training by the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science and Conservation Data Management Unit, boosting their skills in scientific research as well as analysing and managing the data they gather.
Conservation programmes in the UKOTs can be complex, with multiple partners and funders. Developing funding bids, project management and funder reporting can be quite a challenge. That’s where specialist RSPB staff are able to help, providing the less glamorous but nonetheless vital support behind the scenes, so our UKOT partners can focus on the work on the ground.
One example is in the UK Sovereign Base Areas – two military base areas on Cyprus that together make up a unique UKOT. The RSPB is currently supporting local partners in Cyprus in writing up illegal bird trapping data for publication, to bolster work to save songbirds from the nets of poachers.
On the science side, RSPB teams are helping UKOT communities to assess how effective different conservation actions are – for example, land management techniques on St Helena to benefit biodiversity and farming livelihoods.
Monitoring species is a hugely important part of conservation, to understand population trends and track whether actions are having an impact. RSPB teams lend support in the background with developing survey protocols, data management and analysis. The Montserrat forest bird monitoring mentioned earlier and the annual census of the St Helena Plover (Wirebird) are two examples. We provided advice and support in the design of the annual surveys and analyse the data every year, with partners in the territories carrying out the surveys on the ground.
Our staff do also get hands-on in the UKOTs, though, with teams monitoring endemic and endangered UKOT species, from the Pitcairn Reed Warbler to the Northern Rockhopper Penguin. The RSPB has a field team year round on Gough Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, for example.
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Given the strategic importance of the UKOTs for our overall biodiversity, it’s crucial that the UK Government continues to support conservation work in these territories.
One particularly important fund that’s under threat currently is Darwin Plus, which funds a number of crucial projects in the UKOTs. Indeed, this fund recently made it possible to save the Wilkins’ Bunting on Nightingale Island in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago from extinction. It doesn’t get much more vital than that.
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