Hon Claude E.S Hogan
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Editor's Note: A Workshop is presently taking place on Montserrat titled; ADVANCING INVASIVE ALIEN SPECIES MANAGEMENT IN THE CARIBBEAN UKOTs. The workshop is being hosted by the Montserrat National Trust and will run up until October, 20th, 2016.
The workshop has 4 clear objectives aimed at addressing the four invasive alien species management issues that arose during the EU BEST project that ran between 2013 and 2015 within the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories.
The objectives are:.
(a) Biosecurity; developing suitable approaches, systems and implementation at territory level
(b) Firearm usage in invasive species control and management
(c) Public awareness and outreach when managing sensitive invasive species (e.g. cats and goats)
(d) National invasive alien species strategy development.
The feature address for the workshop was presented by Honourable Claude E. S. Hogan; Minister with responsibility for Agriculture, Trade, Lands, Housing and the Environment.
Read Minister Hogan's Address below:
Protocol is observed. Ladies and gentlemen,
Please allow me to recognize some upstanding and outstanding folks here among us, ok, I won’t do that at this auspicious event of naming all 50 people in the room, because upstanding and outstanding means that I know you all and of course we are pretty pleased that everyone in this room is my friend or a friend of Montserrat from: Gibraltar, London, California, BVI, Caymans, St Lucia, the Bahamas, Martinique, Bonaire, Turks and Caicos, USA, Antigua, Saint Eustatius, the UK, Trinidad and Tobago, Jos van Dyke, Ireland or somewhere in this international community we call the World.
I think it was sometime around this time last year, November 2015, when the lead Coordinator for RSPB in the Caribbean Elizabeth Radford became enchanted at a lovely mountainside dinner with me at Ziggy's … and I wasn’t alone, there was the Deputy Governor, Sarita Francis; PS Daphne Cassell and the now Caribbean Coordinator Lyndon John. Anyway, Elizabeth must have been absolutely swooned by the moonlight glittering on the evergreen branches of Lawyers Mountain; the buzz of insects and crickets in the night; and I believe I saw the Montserrat Oriole on a Heliconia; or maybe it was a Mountain chicken in my mind’s eye; when she said; I really would like to have our International Conference here in Montserrat in 2016? I was obviously not very swift on the uptake as I pondered very briefly how would I get this money from DFID to host an international conference even with one year’s notice?
Anyway, as I said the PS was close at hand as my thoughts ranged around Montserrat and I saw: some happy smiling faces not at Government House, but in taxis and mini-buses; and I saw my jeep full of coconuts provided by Chadd Cumberbatch who was reading poetry by our illustrious and prolific Sir Howard Fergus; and behold there was our own effervescent Gregory Willock planning to stage a Ms Festival Show without contestants at Nanny’s Café’ in the middle of a Karaoke night of goat-water, fried chicken; hor d’oeuvres galore, but no Mountain chicken as I guess we don’t eat those anymore; but there was no beach party, but I could see a white sand beach and some sulfur-tinged therapeutic black sand beaches. Ladies and gentlemen this is Montserrat, so it was easy to turn to Elizabeth Radford in that same 10 second timeframe after someone had finished dropping a big bomb-shell of an offer; and simply say, thank you very much! Can we agree the dates tonight? Then of course she later said, the conference was fully financed by RSPB and I needed to throw in some brains and less brawn; and leave the classy, intellectual fineries of protocol et al to others like Her Excellency the Governor Elizabeth Carriere. So here we are one year later with RSPB assisted by our erudite Department of Environment with the hardworking Stephen Mendes at the helm; and our celebrated Montserrat National Trust under the esteem leadership of Director, now Deputy Governor Sarita Francis.
I’m altogether very delighted to welcome you all to Montserrat, the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean to participate in this International Workshop on “ADVANCING INVASIVE ALIEN SPECIES MANAGEMENT IN THE CARIBBEAN UKOTs”. I also wish to note the participation of our local agencies, including our Department of Agriculture technicians and all the national stakeholders mentioned by the Director of Agriculture as being among our frontline partners and stakeholder, including the WAITT-Blue Halo and Coral Cay as experts on the Marine Environment.
The subject of this workshop recognizes that we face environmental challenges on a global scale and under global scrutiny coupled with the socio-economic challenges in our small island communities created by the very issue that we need to solve together. What confronts us today across the Caribbean is that we need to create development without transforming or damaging our environment and to preserve it for future generations to maintain human life on earth. The alien species threat is just one element of this bigger picture, but if left unchecked and not managed, could amount to putting our efforts at sustainable development across the region into clear and present danger.
Like some of the other UKOTs represented here, Montserrat was a partner in the recently concluded EC funded BEST 1 project entitled “Conserving Species and Sites of International Importance by the Eradication of Invasive Alien Species in the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories.” This is the predecessor project to this current initiative on the table before us this week entitled “ADVANCING INVASIVE ALIEN SPECIES MANAGEMENT IN THE CARIBBEAN UKOTs”. We have learnt much so far and Montserrat has been a huge beneficiary to date in relation to the interventions to save our birds and addressing our feral livestock issues, which thanks to RSPB have become mainstream in the work of our Department of the Environment. It’s not that we had too much choice really, because feral donkeys have become a nuisance in residential areas such as Lookout and but for our Christian beliefs, we would have gone beyond the planned use of contraceptives to reduce the donkeys in Montserrat.
Our wish is to also save the last remaining pockets of bio-diversity in West Hill, Perches and Roaches Mountain, just to name a few areas of vast negative impact in Montserrat.
We are also conscious of scores if not hundreds of feral chickens in the Centre Hills, not to mention the increasing number of agoutis and iguanas destroying crops and products of our hardworking farmers on Montserrat, so we expect much from this workshop. If we can get a bigger share we can’t refuse the help.
We in the Caribbean, as small islands with relatively small populations and vulnerable economies are confronted with the need to achieve development which does not compromise the very environment upon which our social, economic and cultural survival is dependent. This sustainable development is predicated on the state of health of our environment including our marine and terrestrial biodiversity resources. As custodians of our natural resources, we as environmental managers and policy-makers, must address the risks and threats posed to our natural patrimony for the present and future generations. To do so effectively calls for our understanding of the threats posed to our resources and which threaten the health of ecosystems and for us to tackle such risks through proper planning and strategic action. This type of stepwise thinking is required to address the risk and the threats posed by invasive alien species.
Invasive alien species have placed themselves high on our development agenda across the region with the Pacific Lionfish which threatens our fisheries sector or in the health sector, where the introduced Aedes aegypti mosquito is responsible for the spread of various viruses such as chikungunya, zika and dengue across the region. Similarly, the health of the region’s biodiversity, particularly our birds and endemic reptiles, have been negatively impacted by the inadvertent introduction of cats, rats, mice.
Very recently, people in Montserrat were concerned about the alleged addition of a new type of snake from a ship off-loading here; and have urged our Government to maintain the highest level of vigilance and safeguards from alien invasive species.
I am aware that steps are being taken across other Caribbean islands by various agencies and partnerships to address the problem of Invasive Alien Species management with some successes achieved. For example, I understand that rats on a number of offshore islands, in St. Lucia, Antigua, Dog Island (Anguilla) and Sandy Cay (BVI) have been successfully removed. Similarly, work on feral goat populations is underway in the BVI to control their impacts on Great and Little Tobago. We need to create more multi-island projects as in this next phase of work by the RSPB in 4 UKOTs including Montserrat.
Since the eruption of our Soufriere Hills Volcano, we have become acutely familiar with the challenge posed by the number of feral cattle, goats and pigs impacting on our Centre Hills Forest Reserve. My Ministry of the Environment has been working assiduously to address the issues that confront us and there are improvements being observed in the Centre Hills especially as it relates to the stabilization of the Endemic Montserrat Oriole Population and the other 10 or so restricted range birds that also appear to be thriving on island. The monitoring and control of invasive species in and around the Centre Hills is also aiding in the forest restoration that was once ravaged initially by Hurricane Hugo in 1989; and then from the onslaught of the Soufriere Hills volcano from 1995, which is yet to be declared to be in a new phase of dormancy.
In addition to our efforts at Invasive Alien Species eradication and control, I am particularly aware of the need for governments to tackle the issue of bio-security which is an issue to be addressed in this workshop. This is a multi-agency challenge as the Director for Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary surveillance just alluded to as a challenge which confronts our various customs and air and sea port personnel. This critical area is in need of clear and well thought out strategies as prevention is the most cost effective measure that can be implemented when it comes to management in relation to bio-security.
I agree with my Director that public awareness and outreach when managing sensitive invasive species such as cats and goats which are pets for some and food for others is of the utmost importance. Public awareness is critical in ensuring the best livestock management practices, which is key to preventing any additional release of species such as pigs, goats, sheep, cattle and even donkeys into the wild. This workshop should serve as an excellent forum for sharing our collective knowledge and experiences; and for informing non-traditional stakeholders whom we need to engage in this important effort at fighting invasive alien species. May I hasten to add that one must not forget that some exotic plant species can be of equal detriment to the fragile ecosystems of small islands, therefore we also need to pay attention to the management and control of these species, especially at our ports of entry.
So indeed, we are very fortunate to have the support of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to help us with the organization and co-ordination of various efforts in the search for common and cost effective solutions. We are equally grateful to the European Union and their financial support through the “Voluntary Scheme for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Territories of the EU’s Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories.”
This has allowed for the increasing cross-territory partnerships I am calling for at this workshop and I hope that it will blossom, notwithstanding Brexit, as part of our post-project scheme of initiatives to: protect; conserve; mitigate; and create the enabling environment for the sustainable growth and development of our islands without using up our endemic resources or having our communities destroyed by alien invasive species.
So without further ado, ‘Big-up and Nuff Respect’ to the RSPB, the EU and all our Governments enjoined in this combat to maintain and sustain our islands. I wish you a productive and informative workshop and I hope our partnership efforts will grow stronger. Thank you Elizabeth Radford and the RSPB Family for considering Montserrat. See you all tonight at Government House, but you can forget about the queen show, karaoke and all that fancy stuff. Let’s get to work.
Thank you all very much for listening to me.
