History of Jersey Zoo & Durrell Trust ex-situ / in-situ conservation efforts.

I remember reading that most of the individuals of this iguana species kept by European collections are the offspring of the original pair brought to Jersey in 1990.

Yes, I think you are correct with that Kifaru.

The Blijdorp Zoo animals does consist of four wild caught individuals (which the Dutch prime minister apparently personally flew back from St. Eustatius in 2018) and an animal of Jersey stock that is kept there too.

The good news is that in September of this year the Blijdorp animals bred and a single hatchling was born.

First Lesser Antillean Iguana hatches in the Netherlands

 

There are apparently a few of these animals in private hands but by no means as commonly kept as other iguana species, this is quoted from the IUCN Conservation Action Plan :

"A private breeder in Germany is known to have I. delicatissima and unconfirmed individual breeders are believed to exist in France and Italy."

 

Backstory of the original Lac Alaotra gentle lemurs (1990)

The original 10 Lac Alaotra gentle lemurs that arrived at Jersey were significant not only in the sense that they were the first of this species to be brought into captivity in a zoo but also in that they were collected by Gerald Durrell himself.

Each of these individual animals also had their own story which reflects the wider environmental problems and anthropogenic pressures on the species in the Lac Alaotra region.


Rescued from the illegal pet trade by Gerald Durrell

Back in the late 80's and early 90's the Lac Alaotra gentle lemur ( which is called "Bandro" in the region) were not just subject to pressures from overexploitation for bushmeat but were also being captured to either keep as pets locally or for the illegal pet trade in the cities.

Durrell was given permission by the Malagasy government to visit several of the villages around the lakeshores and enquire whether any lemurs had recently been captured and to purchase any that he could find.

All together, 8 of these lemurs were found which were being kept by villagers and destined for the illegal pet trade. Durrell purchased all 8 of the animals for the equivalent of what the villagers had spent on rice and bananas to feed them.

A further two lemurs that were being kept as pets by a local man were also obtained after an explanation by Durrell convinced the owner that keeping these primates as pets was a bad idea.

The names given to the original ten lemurs were: Fali, Andila, Mihanta, Isaboy, Danielle, Edward, Araminta, Romulus, Georges and Tanambe.



Fali : The last of the 10 founders (1990-2017)

The last surviving founding individual of the group was a male lemur called Fali and he lived up to 2017 before passing away at the ripe old age of 26 years.

During his lifetime Fali contributed a great deal to the ex-situ population of his species and fathered 17 offspring with his mate Anhila. The offspring of Fali and Anhila in turn produced 79 descendents.

Photo credit to @Writhedhornbill and @Gigit.

Sources: "Husbandry and breeding of the Alaotran gentle lemur: Hapalemur griseus alaotrensis at Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust", J.C. Beattie and A.T.C. Feistner, 1998 (ZSL-International Zoo Yearbook). & Durrell says farewell to Fali the gentle lemur

 

I'll do a bit of scan reading on that subject and see if I can find anything.

 

The history of Alaotra gentle lemur is rather repeatable.

Unfortunately, primates in very many tropical countries are caught for local trade or for pets. Stopping the procedure would be long time and might be impossible, but it would be easy to collect the live animals from the market and start the zoo breeding population. This would contribute to saving many endangered primates, like Durrell's lemurs. I hope more efforts follow this way.

Live pets are usually opportunistic catch or a casual result of hunting adults as crop pests or for meat, so taking them away would not increase the demand. Also, rare primates are often formally protected and trading pets is formally illegal, only it is a dead law. And these pets, generally, have no chance of living long, because they are too difficult to keep or become aggressive when they grow to maturity.

 

Very difficult one to comment on @Jurek7.

I get the impression that even back in 1990 Gerald Durrell was rather uneasy (and for good reason) about purchasing these animals from locals and that this was rather a last resort under severe time constraints to obtain a breeding group rather than an organized plan.

Also, I don't really agree with you regarding zoos simply going out to the tropics and purchasing primates from locals and thus tacitly supporting the illegal trade. This will just encourage the illegal trade even further until it becomes an even greater driver of population decline in the wild and in conjunction with compounding drivers causes extinction in the wild.

I think the best option is to work long-term and support in-situ efforts involving the local community and raising both living standards / sustainable development and promoting environmental education. This in my opinion is definitely the best means of mitigating bushmeat hunting and local involvement in the illegal pet trade.

I agree that it is difficult to implement and demands a lot of resources and also that it takes a long time to see results. However, in combating these kinds of social problems you really do just have to take the longer and harder (and ethical) road and fight the long battle with social science.

 

I think it is warranted. Zoos in the West now operate with high, legally mandated rules of animal welfare. So there is a place to bring a few founders of a monkey or lemur species, something like 10 animals in few years, but return to large-scale import of primates for exhibition in zoos is impossible. It might be argued the opposite - that even bringing any founders is too much, because Western zoos are already overfilled with zoo-bred primates.

In the meantime, trade in primates in the tropics exists for local markets, is opportunistic. It is far too widespread to stop, as are social problems which cause hunting and habitat destruction. These things are of completely different magnitude, and stopping them will take a different time-scale. Anyway, the situation in many countries has not improved since Durrell's times.

 

There is a paper on this topic that I've just had a scan read through called: "Phylogeography of the Endangered Lesser Antillean Iguana, Iguana Delicatissima: A Recent Diaspora in an Archipelago Known for Ancient Herpetological Endemism."

According to the genetic research carried out by those authors it would appear that there isn't that much genetic difference between the different populations of this iguana species across the Caribbean islands. Basically it is suggested that there hasn't been sufficient time in isolation for this kind of genetic subspeciation to happen amongst the different island meta-populations.

The iguana is believed to have spread comparatively recently overwater to other islands of the Caribbean and colonized these (*I wonder whether this could have also been a "translocation" done by the Taino and Arawak indigenous peoples too with the iguana as a food resource ?).

This is a quote from the paper I mentioned above :

"The lack of unique haplotypes across the majority of the range of I. delicatissima suggests that populations of the species have not been isolated from each other for an extended period of time. Genetic similarities imply that the species may have spread via recent over-water dispersal rather than having been isolated following ancient dispersal events or a vicariance event of the proto-Antilles (Hedges 1996). This lack of genetic structure among I. delicatissima populations contrasts starkly with the high degree of island endemism observed for most terrestrial taxa of the Lesser Antillean herpetofauna."

 

Obtaining endangered primates for founding ex-situ populations need not be done by zoos through purchasing them from illegal traffickers or dealers. In fact this is absolutely the worst way of going about it (Durrell did it out of necessity due to time constraints and logistical challenges and not out of willingness).

Many of these animals end up confiscated from illegal traders by entities such as the police and end up being placed in sanctuaries. Zoos may therefore obtain these animals from sanctuaries without even having to sit in the same room or talk to an illegal trafficker or owner of an endangered primate.

The problem is when these animals are held within sanctuaries but there are bureaucratic difficulties due to governments of these countries. As I understand it that is actually the main issue that Jersey zoo has had with trying to obtain the white footed tamarin in Colombia.

Ironically in Colombia there are sanctuaries with enclosures so overcrowded with rescued white footed tamarins that sexes have been separated and individuals put on contraceptives to stop these from breeding.

Clearly some of these animals should be at Jersey and part of a coordinated ex-situ breeding programe but some nameless Colombian bureaucrat (would like to use a different word for that but I'll resist the temptation) sitting in an office seems to disagree.

 

The issue you mentioned is one that needs to be sorted: it is called bureaucracy and incompetence on the part of Govt. vet/law enforcement to act in the interest of endangered taxa.

Your quote on the genetics of Lesser Antillean iguana is quite interesting. I will study the paper in greater detail as I remain a little conservative on the conclusion that no (sub-)speciation has occurred in these. Dwarfism in an island species can happen quite quickly and the ancestral source for L.A. iguana must be .... (hence speciation, ... and I wonder how colonisation would have happened given ocean currents).

 

I agree, and it is absolutely rife in this area of the world and has been an obstacle to many conservation interventions both historically and in the present.

Its an interesting paper for sure and definitely reccommend you to have a read of it (I'll re-read it too at some point in greater detail as I just scan-read it).

Of course the iguanas could have swam (they are great swimmers) or been washed on rafts of vegetation between islands but I wonder whether the iguanas could have also been transported to different islands in boats by the ancient indigenous inhabitants of these islands (Arawak and Taino).

I read a paper once that suggested that these peoples often "translocated" wild animals from one island to the other and released them to serve as a food resource (I think in the paper I mention the example was of hutia specifically and possibly of sliders).

 

Here is the paper I mentioned in my last comment that theorises that hutia (and why not also iguanas in other parts of the Caribbean?) were transported between islands by the ancient Taino peoples and released to serve as a food resource :

"Bahamian hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami) in the Lucayan Realm: Pre-Columbian Exploitation and Translocation"

 

Further breeding success of the Alaotran gentle lemur at Jersey (1998 to the present)

The Jersey gentle lemurs have bred several times since 1998. Nevertheless, several pregnancies over the years of the zoos lemurs have unfortunately led to stillborns.

In 2003 there was the birth of twins and in 2008 there was another gentle lemur born. This was a male which was named Brian who remains at the zoo and has since that time grown and been paired with a female.

The most recent breeding of the Jersey gentle lemurs that I've been able to find occurred in 2019 and was the first to have occurred in 10 years.

Thankfully the infant was accepted by the mother without any need for keeper intervention and is being successfully reared as seen in the video below:



Sources: Saving the endangered bamboo lemur

 

Lac Alaotran gentle lemur enclosure design and history at Jersey Zoo

The enclosures of the Lac Alaotran gentle lemurs at Jersey have also seen several updates and improvements since the animals first arrived in 1990. During the 1990's the enclosures were continually adapted to reflect new information obtained through the keeping of this species in captivity.

From the late 1990's onwards the enclosure design increasingly began to incorporate a more naturalistic layout and landscaping. These adaptions reflected what was being discovered through important in-situ research about the way the species utilized its habitat in the wild.

Currently there are four enclosures for the different gentle lemur groups that are kept at the zoo.

The main outdoor enclosure is situated around a pond with reedbeds that mimic the habitat the species would inhabit in the wild.

Studies conducted at the zoo have shown that the lemurs kept in the more naturalistic enclosures show a behaviour and activity budget that closely mirrors that of Alaotran gentle lemurs in their natural habitat.

Research into how to ensure the optimum husbandry conditions for these lemurs and working for improvements continues to be an important priority


Photo credits to @RickJ.

Sources: "A Study of Enclosure Effect on the Behaviour of the Alaotran Gentle Lemur (Hapalemur griseus alaotrensis) at Jersey Zoo and Implications for Captive Management and Welfare", Elena Mather.

 

Some videos I found on the subject of the conservation of the Lesser Antillean iguana.

This is a brilliantly made short film with a narrative (conservation story-telling) imagined from the perspective of this iguana:


This is a more scientifically minded explanation of the ecology of the iguana and the threats it faces that was created by a field biology working with the species:


Here is some footage of the iguanas at Jersey (which appear to be very tame):

 

Videos on the conservation of the Lac Alaotran gentle lemur:

This one is a brilliant video filmed (in 2011) from the perspective and with the input of local peoples working in the conservation of the lemurs, the lake ecosystem and as eco-tourism guides:

A fundraising campaign on ensuring community conservation patrols of protected areas in Madagascar including those in Lac Alaotra with the gentle lemur.

Some footage of the Jersey Lac Alaotran gentle lemurs:

 

Here , I'll post relevant videos relating to the recent history of the Livingstone's fruitbat colony at Jersey for anyone interested to have a watch.

Enjoy

General history of the colony and the importance of ex-situ and in-situ conservation:

Videos regarding the move of the Livingstone's fruit bats to their new enclosure and upkeep of this:





A keepers talk on the bats:

Insight from keepers who work with them:

"Bat of the week", videos introducing some of the characters in the Livingstone's & Rodrigues fruitbat enclosure (interesting social dynamics which have been part of extensive research):










Bat births in recent years:

 

Plus in reply to your comment how do you expect a zoo to create a good working relationship with the government of a mega-diverse country like Brazil or Colombia if they would be quite literally breaking national laws by purchasing primates from illegal traffickers in markets ?

If you look at the situation of species like the white footed tamarin in Colombia this is one of the principal threats posed to these primates in that they end up being sold in little bird cages in markets as a novelty pet.

Should zoos be encouraging that kind of thing ?

I think that morally and ethically and even pragmatically it almost goes without saying that this is absolutely not a constructive way to behave. Even with the case of the Lac Alaotran gentle lemurs that I wrote about above Durrell had actually obtained written permission from the Malagasy government to purchase these animals.

The better option is to sit tight and aim for a better working relationship with countries in question, play the long game if needed and negotiate with governments and uncooperative bureaucrats to obtain animals that are needed for ex-situ (often the animals at Jersey zoo are legally owned by the governments of countries like Brazil and Madagascar anyway).

I'd like to bring in two zoochatters who I know have a better knowledge of the situation on the ground with the white footed tamarin in Colombia, @toto98 and @nicholas , hopefully they will share their thoughts on this too as it would be really interesting.

 

Good question, very relevant to the breeding programme.

Another threatened lizard in zoo breeding programme: prehensile-tailed skink Corucia zebrata, could also potentially have more overlooked subspecies / cryptic species / ES units from different islands.

 

Yes, thats very true and I agree there are probably subspecies.

However, the problem is that this skink species is data deficient and until we have baseline data on the conservation status of the species as a whole then we can't really go about investigating subspecies.