Conserving the Ridgway's Hawk in Punta Cana, DR

Hold on to your hats folks!! The Ridgway’s Hawk is coming back in a big way in Punta Cana. As we suspected 2016 is going to be and already has been a land mark year for the Ridgway’s Hawk Project.

We are working double time trying to get everything accomplished during this very busy time of year. Thanks to a new pair of hawks deciding to call the release site their home, we have had to make plans to move the release site in 2016. Male Black 2/5 and Female Black 3/8 have been making a nest right on the platform at the release site. We thought they may move off and find a more suitable nest site, but it appears they are bound and determined to stay put. Hopefully this young pair will be successful at nesting in 2016.

We are currently monitoring 11 pairs of Ridgway’s Hawks in Punta Cana. On top of that, 6 pairs are currently incubating eggs. This is truly an amazing sign that these hawks are adapting well and that we are on our way to creating a new, self-sustaining population of Ridgway’s Hawks in the Puntacana area.

As usual for this time of year we are very busy monitoring the wild population of hawks in Los Haitises National Park. This year we are monitoring more than 100 pairs which are more than ever. One of our main objectives is to increase the production in these wild pairs. With this effort, we are able to increase production enough that we can remove nestlings for releases and at the same time, increase the production of fledglings in the wild population in LHNP. This is a win win for the Ridgway’s, especially since we have hired 15 local Dominican field technicians to help us accomplish this task. This has been a great way to help the local communities see the Ridgway’s as a valuable resource.

In about a month we will begin to bring the nestlings to Puntacana for release.  Our goal for 2016 is to release 25 healthy hawks into the area. Hopefully the nesting pairs in Punta Cana will be successful in raising some young hawks as well.

That’s it for now, time to get back to work. As always, a big thanks to all of you who help support this very important work!!!

It’s the end of 2015 and it feels good to look back on another fruitful year for the Ridgway’s Hawk conservation project in Punta Cana.

The work we did in Jan 2015 drastically reduced electrocutions of Ridgway’s Hawks this year. Only one hawk was electrocuted and it was on a pole that we had not been able to adequately cover with the materials that we had purchased in 2014. This year we have a grant from the Avian Power Line Interaction Committee (APLIC) and matching funds from the Puntacana Ecological Foundation, allowing for the purchase of more retro-fitting supplies with the goal to cover a new section of power lines and also to finish retrofitting the more complicated fixtures that we were not able to cover last year. The work on the power poles not only prevents electrocution of the Ridgway’s Hawks, but helps to protect many other bird species, including migratory raptors.

It has been several months now since we closed down the release site for the season and radio tracking the reintroduced hawks has been the lion’s share of our work. We do this in order to know how each hawk is progressing and also to make sure that people living near where the birds are hunting and roosting are aware of our reintroduction efforts and understand the importance of helping to protect this critically endangered species.

Many of the young birds that formed new pairs last breeding season have been seen together again. We have been concerned for the pair Red 27 and Black 23 since this spring when a gardener found Red 27 on the ground, overwhelmed by an infestation of over 70 bot-fly larvae. Miraculously, Red 27 survived the ordeal (see our last two quarterly reports), but she and Black 23 were not seen together at all over the summer and fall after she was re-released. We are happy to report that they have been together recently and we are excited for their prospects in 2016. Another young pair Red 24 and Black AR have already begun pre-nesting season copulations, also a promising sign for 2016.

As always we are constantly trying to improve our efforts at educating the public about Ridgway’s Hawks and conservation in general. At the end of October our environmental education coordinator, Marta Curti conducted a teacher training workshop at the Puntacana Ecological Foundation. This was an intense four day session and 10 teachers from 5 target communities in the Punta Cana area participated. These teachers learned valuable skills which they can take back to their communities and use to help reach hundreds of students. This event was so successful that we are already in the process of planning the next workshop.

Project coordinator, Thomas Hayes, says he thinks this year is going to be pretty awesome for the Ridgway’s Hawk in Punta Cana.

It is that time of year again. The hustle and bustle of our busiest season is coming to an end. We completed the nest monitoring in the middle of July and at the release site in Puntacana Resort & Club, only a few Ridgway’s Hawks continue to return in the evenings to feed. This does not mean that the work is over until the next nesting and release season. It is actually just a transition into focusing on monitoring the new population in Punta Cana and preparing ourselves for the upcoming season.

Speaking of monitoring, we are tracking more Ridgway’s Hawks than ever – a result of our most successful season this past year in Punta Cana. Not only did we release more Ridgway’s Hawks than ever before (31), we also had a record low number of mortalities with only one confirmed. We credit this incredible achievement to all the hard work we have put into our education program and our efforts to make all the power lines in Puntacana Resort & Club and the surrounding area a safe place for Ridgway’s Hawks. With so many new birds, we have to focus our attention on keeping track of each individual hawk. This allows us to hone in on areas where the hawks are starting to establish territories, and educate community members living nearby and who are most likely to come into contact with these birds. . We also work with locals - providing them with materials and information on building chicken coops - so they can protect their chickens by keeping them in a coop at night or while they are unsupervised. This not only protects the chickens from predation by hawks, but also from other predators such as rats, mongoose, feral cats, snakes and owls. Once people no longer see Ridgway’s Hawks as a threat to their chickens, they can begin to understand how these birds are beneficial to have around.

This past season we found six new pairs of Ridgway’s Hawks in the Punta Cana area, bringing the total number of pairs in the new population to eight pairs. This is a major achievement for the project. Four of these pairs attempted nesting in 2015 and one pair was successful in producing the fourth wild young to fledge naturally in the area. In the last report we wrote about one of these nests failing due to the adult female being infested by parasites while incubating a nest. This female has fully recovered and has been returned to the wild. We hope to see her trying to nest again in the coming year. We are very hopeful that we will see even more pairs in 2016, as well as more nesting success and wild hatched young.

Our research in the past few years has showed us that parasitism by bot flies (Philornis spp.) is one of the major causes of mortality in young Ridgway’s Hawks. We have been working very hard to develop treatment protocols that will help us to increase the productivity of the species. This undertaking has been very successful and is allowing us to take larger numbers of hawks from the source population in Los Haitises National Park without having a negative effect on the numbers of nestlings which fledge there. In fact, we are more than tripling chick production in this population. This is great news as it allows us to work faster towards the end goal of having a self-sustaining population in Punta Cana. This year we also embarked on research in order to gain a better knowledge of these parasites. This work is being conducted in a laboratory right here in the Puntacana Ecological Foundation. We hope that in the future we will understand why these parasites are so prevalent and so devastating to some bird populations. Eventually we may be able to use what we learn to implement control methods on a larger scale which could have a positive impact on other bird species both in Dominican Republic and in other parts of the world, as well!!

As usual, we have a lot of news to report about the Ridgway’s Hawk Conservation Project. During the nesting season between January and July we are busier than ever with all aspects of Ridgway’s Hawk Conservation. Our holistic approach to conserving this critically endangered species means that we have a very diverse set of tasks to accomplish. We are currently monitoring 90+ pairs of Ridgway’s Hawks in Los Haitises National Park. On top of that we are also monitoring 8 pairs of Ridgways Hawks in Punta Cana and the surrounding area. This not only includes finding these pairs and their nests, but also climbing into the nests to monitor the health of nestlings once they hatch. We also help out with a number of hands on management techniques such as repairing nests to keep them from falling and treating nestlings for parasites which can cause high rates of mortality. We have released 26 new Ridgway’s Hawks into the ecological reserve in Punta Cana and our efforts to increase environmental awareness are in full swing with increasingly positive results.

During the height of the breeding season, we received a call from Punta Cana employees stating that they had found an injured Ridgway’s Hawk on the ground. It was a female hawk we had released in the area last year. She had been incubating one egg in her first nest and became infested with a number of parasites which caused her to grow weak. Thankfully, we were able to restore this hawk to health and release her again. The fact that the employees were able to identify the hawk, knew of its importance and went to the trouble to try to save her, shows how far the project has come in educating people about this bird and creating interest and support for the program. Gracias Amigos!!!!

On May 22, we brought 55 students from the communities of Juanillo and Suero Juanillo to the Punta Cana Ecological Foundation for our annual Ridgway’s Hawk Day celebration. Students visited the Ridgway’s Hawk release site and had the opportunity to see a number of hawks up close. They each received a palm tree sapling to plant at home and participated in an art project, decorating their pots with felt and other materials. We then brought the students to the beach for a boat ride along the shore and to participate in a few games teaching them about coral reefs and conservation.

Of the 8 pairs of Ridgway’s Hawks in Punta Cana that we are monitoring, several have engaged in nesting behavior so far this year. One pair is currently incubating eggs and one pair successfully hatched two chicks. Unfortunately, one of the young chicks died sometime in its first week of life. The second chick is healthy and continues to grow each day. Another pair of hawks spent a long time incubating what turned out to be infertile eggs. As part of our assisted dispersal program, we placed a young chick slated for release into this pair’s nest - a technique called “fostering.” The adults took to the chick right away and did a wonderful job raising a healthy bird. This young hawk successfully fledged on the 5th of May and still doing well to date.

Once again it is Ridgway’s Hawk breeding season and we have spent the last several months monitoring the ever growing population of hawks in Punta Cana.  We have also been preparing ourselves and the release area for another busy season.  This has included making it a safer place for the birds by continuing with our environmental education program and retrofitting of power lines.

Retro fitting power lines has been one of our biggest efforts so far this year.  Many power poles here in the Dominican Republic are made of cement with a metal cross-arm, making the entire pole conducive to electricity.  If a bird touches any part of a cement power pole with a metal cross-arm while touching one of the power lines it can be electrocuted – especially in wet weather.  With a wooden pole and wooden cross-arm a bird would have to touch two energized lines at the same time in order to be electrocuted.  We initially installed wooden T-perches above the power poles in Punta Cana to prevent electrocutions, but sometimes the hawks perch below the T-perches and other smaller species of birds will perch on any horizontal surface of the pole.  Even though we have worked very hard to make these poles safer we still had several Ridgway’s Hawk mortalities due to electrocutions in 2014.  We immediately jumped back into action and last August (2014) we invited Rick Harness from EDM International to evaluate the distribution lines in the area.  Rick is an expert in preventing raptor and other wildlife electrocutions.  His job is to evaluate distribution lines and identify areas which are potentially dangerous.  He then makes recommendations in order to correct the problem.  Rick spent a week evaluating our situation in Punta Cana so he could advise us on how to proceed.  Rick recommended a number of different products that we could use to retrofit the lines in Punta Cana and then we made the ultimate decision on which product to use based on price and functionality. Unfortunately, even though the local power company in Punta Cana has agreed to install the products for free and we can purchase the materials we need almost at production cost, it still requires about $150 total to retrofit a single power pole.  As expensive as retrofitting is, we feel that this is the best option in order to make a safe environment for the hawks as well as for the other species of birds found in the area.  After the lengthy process of ordering and getting these products shipped to the DR, we began retro-fitting power poles in January.  With a $5000 grant from the Walt Disney Foundation and a $4000 donation from Grupo Puntacana, we were able to purchase enough materials to cover most of the poles immediately surrounding the release area.  Power Line Sentry manufactured the parts we needed and the founder of the company, Ron Spencer, even flew down to the DR from the US on his own dime to make sure that all the products were installed correctly.  With Rick’s and Ron’s help we have covered about 80 poles.  We have estimated that it will cost upwards of $100,000 to completely retrofit all the poles in and around the Puntacana Resort and Club.  Poco a poco (little by little) we move forward, for now all of the poles where we have seen mortalities have been retrofitted.  As the population expands we will continue with this effort.

We are beginning to see signs that our efforts in education are proving effective.  We have been receiving calls from locals in the communities close to PC. Rather than shooting raptors that show up near their houses, they are now calling us to come and identify the birds and also to provide them with chicken cages so that they can prevent having their small chickens eaten.  The message that hawks are beneficial to have around is starting to take hold as locals talk about not wanting to shoot the hawks since they help to control rats and snakes which eat their crops and poultry.

Looking to the future, we plan to release 20+ Ridgway’s Hawks at the Punta Cana hack site during the 2015 season.  We also expect to have more nestlings hatch right here in Punta Cana as we have identified two new pairs of hawks who are nest building, doubling the breeding population for a grand total of four breeding pairs this year!  In addition to the actively nesting pairs, several juvenile Ridgway’s have paired off, spending time near each other, seeming to be forming pair bonds.  These juveniles may not reproduce this year, but we know they are a sign of good things to come.