Conserving the Ridgway's Hawk in Punta Cana, DR

The fifth year of the Ridgeway’s Hawk Conservation Project marks a significant milestone for the Puntacana Ecological Foundation (PCEF) and The Peregrine Fund. Having begun the process of establishinged a concentrated and stable population of Ridgeway’s in the Punta Cana area with year round monitoring carried out by the Peregrine
volunteers, the Ecological Foundation and The Peregrine Fund will delay this year’s reintroductions to better document the previously reintroduced hawks’ adaptation to the Punta Cana area.  Also, a new education campaign will be commencing soon with the help of Fundación Propagas.  Education is a vital component of wildlife conservation and we hope to realize greater results in the upcoming years with this new partner. 

Most importantly, we will be making daily observations of the first pair of Ridgway’s Hawks to form in the
Punta Cana area.  Male “AN” and female “ND” from the 2012 introductions have been seen together off and on throughout the fall and are now a confirmed pair.  They have begun the process of building a nest and have also been observed copulating and making food transfers which are sure signs these two birds are attempting to reproduce.  Ridgway’s Hawk females have never been recorded to reproduce at one year of age, but it has been recorded in other raptor species, so we are anxious to see what happens with this pair. Some of the other released hawks have established territories immediately bordering each other. We are monitoring these birds closely as well with the hope that they may pair up in the near future.

In other news, The Peregrine Fund, the PCEF, and Grupo Puntacana’s architecture department have worked together to compile the previous four years’ of observational and GPS data into a digital map outlining the hawk’s’ territoriesy and identifying exactly which electrical poles present the largest danger to the hawks.  While there are several options available for retrofitting the poles to make them safer for the birds, the most economical
and immediately actionable option for The Peregrine Fund and the Ecological Foundation is to install the wooden perches pictured below. Continued observations of the initial pilot implementation of the original 10 wooden perches back in August 2012, has shown that the Ridgeway’s and other raptors much prefer the wooden perches to sitting on the lines or on the poles. Over the next few months the PCEF and the Peregrine Fund will install perches throughout the 30 square mile property of Grupo Puntacana and perhaps beyond that in accordance with the birds’ territories.

While all of the this work isgoing on in Punta Cana The Peregrine Fund will be directing much of its attention and efforts to working with the last remaining wild population of Ridgeways Hawks in Los Haitises National Park. Their efforts will focus on community education, better documenting the largest threats to the remaining population and realizing in situ interventions to protect the hawks in their natural habitats.   

Finally, the Puntacana Ecological Foundation along with its ecotourism partner, E-Way Group, has developed a walking tour dedicated to exhibiting and explaining the Foundation’s various projects and programs. The Ridgeway Hawk Conservation Program will have its own display in this tour and this will hopefully be a center piece in raising greater awareness with visiting tourists about the plight of one of the rarest species of hawks in the world.