Conserving the Ridgway's Hawk in Punta Cana, DR

It’s October and the Ridgway's Hawks are officially taking a recess from their busy nesting season. We usually continue to monitor them to make sure that they are still in their territories and in optimum health. As the 2020 nesting season is officially over, we're beyond excited to announce that this has been the most successful nesting season in Puntacana so far.

During the 2020 nesting season we monitored 18 pairs of Ridgway’s Hawks in Puntacana and 17 of these pairs attempted nesting. We observed 21 nestlings successfully fledge, of which we were able to band 18. This gives us hope for the future of Ridgway’s Hawk in Puntacana and the Dominican Republic.

With Covid 19 it has definitely been a strange year! You may be wondering how we managed to keep the project going and at the same time have our most successful nesting season in Puntacana during such a difficult time. The lions share of all the work was achieved by the locals who have been trained to accomplish this important work. Thanks to their dedication and commitment, we were able to keep working despite the pandemic and the adversities that it caused. This is why it is so important for us to keep training locals, and now our resolve to do this is stronger than ever.

As you can imagine due to COVID-19, we were unable to conduct face to face education outreach in Dominican Republic throughout most of FY 2020. However, at the start of the year, we did conduct community and school visits reaching a total of 1,600 people, of which 1,479 were first time contacts. We distributed 10 chicken coops, held 3 workshops for 34 people (19 of which were teachers) and visited 18 communities and 4 schools. While we were unable to host any Ridgway's Hawk Day activities, we did host a virtual event which included a presentation and a chance for participants to meet some of our field team in Los Limones and Puntacana. We had 17 participants for this event.

We also designed and printed several new education materials which are available in both Spanish and Haitian Creole. We continue to make progress on the text and design of our raptor-based environmental education guide which we hope to make available throughout the Caribbean, and available in Spanish, English, and Haitian Creole.

We're already preparing ourselves for the next nesting season and as you can see, great things are coming for the Ridgway's Hawk Project next year.

It’s June 22nd and the Ridgway’s Hawk season is coming to an end. After a great start to the season, Covid-19 entered our lives and we had to adapt our work to the new normal. We’re very happy to say that despite all the changes, we have been able to continue our work in Punta Cana without any major problems. In fact, this has turned out to be the best nesting season on record for wild Ridgway’s Hawks in Punta Cana.

The season started off with a bang! Most of the pairs of hawks began building their nests and copulating very early in the season and we were excited to be, once again, working with such an amazing species.

Despite the pandemic we have been monitoring 17 established pairs of hawks, as well as a few lone males, and some juveniles from the previous year. It’s always very pleasant to see these young birds doing well. So far, 17 young have fledged and two more nestlings will be banded soon. The hawks success this year makes us really happy and gives us great expectations for the future.

Another important part of the project is the Educational program, this part has definitely changed during the pandemic as we usually visit all the communities near Punta Cana. This year we have introduced new ways of reaching locals via Instagram live, zoom presentations and others platforms. It is our goal to reach and educate more locals each year and for them to learn about this endangered species so they can generate interest to preserve what's theirs.

Work in other project areas has continued this season as well, though we have had to limit some work in order to take precautions due to Covid-19. We have continued to monitor about 150 pairs of hawks in Los Haitises National Park. We asked our local team to work together, but maintain social distancing. About mid season, this meant that we stopped climbing into nests to treat nestlings for nest flies. We did continue all of our monitoring of these nests and it appears that without nest treatment nest success will be lower this season. Fortunately we were able to treat many nests prior to the pandemic causing us to alter our work plan.

In Aniana Vargas National Park, where we released 25 young Ridgway’s Hawks in 2019, we have continued to monitor as well. Early in the season we observed some nesting behavior from a pair of hawks there, but after the nest they were building fell, they seemed to lose interest. This is actually normal behavior for younger birds. Often they will begin showing some interest in nesting during their first year, but they don’t normally have nesting success. Their chances of success in nesting during their first year increase if they have a nest mate that is older, but since all of the hawks in this area were just released in 2019, that was not the case. We continue to get reports from our local crew in this area and they are seeing hawks on a daily basis. Hopefully we will see some successful nesting in Aniana Vargas National Park during the 2021 season.