Conserving the Ridgway's Hawk in Punta Cana, DR

2014 has been a great year for the Ridgway’s Hawk. In our last report we mentioned that we increased our release efforts and brought 29 new hawks to PuntaCana. All of these individuals were able to be released at the hacksite in PuntaCana and with a lot of hard work, all fledged successfully. The last of the released hawks (currently six individuals continue to eat at the hacksite) are still returning to the hacksite to eat, but as the remaining hawks become independent and begin to hunt for themselves, they will stop returning to eat the food we have been providing. This year we released our first group of hawks on April 9^th and it wasn’t until the first week in June till we released the final group. The large group of individuals released has made this the longest hacking period that the project has ever had. In all, we have been at the release site every morning and every evening for close to 5 months and have purchased close to US $4000.00 in food (mostly laboratory raised rats) to feed the hawks.

A big part of our work is tracking and monitoring the birds when they are not at the release site. This is very important as it gives us the opportunity to further insure the success of each individual after they have become independent. These tracking expeditions often become educational excursions as we tell the story of the hawk and the conservation project to tourists, local farmers, security guards and anyone else we encounter. One of the biggest issues facing Ridgway’s Hawks in the Dominican Republic is persecution by humans. This is normally done by subsistence farmers who are accustomed to killing hawks to protect their chickens rather than protecting them with chicken coops. One person at a time, we are educating these farmers about the importance of the hawks and the work we are doing. We have even begun to provide chicken coops to some of these individuals and they really like to use them as it protects their valuable chickens from other predators as well. We also educate them about all the benefits that raptors provide to farmers in controlling agricultural pests such as mice and rats. The cooperation from these individuals is encouraging.

Another part of this monitoring is to learn what causes of mortality our released hawks may be facing. In nature it is normal for some individuals to parish in the process of reaching adult hood. In raptor populations in general, it is thought that between 70-80% of nestlings born in the wild will die during their first year. As mentioned before, persecution is one of the major causes of mortality for Ridgway’s Hawks and normally predation by other animals is also a big concern for nestling and fledgling raptors. In Ridgway’s, we have documented very low mortality rates due to predation, but have discovered a larger concern, electrocution on power lines. Fortunately for Ridgway’s Hawks in the PuntaCana area, Grupo PuntaCana continues to work on this issue. The PuntaCana Ecological Foundation and Grupo PuntaCana have already been working on these power lines for some time now since our first documented case of electrocution in 2011. In 2014, we brought in an expert in raptor electrocutions to review the power lines in the release area. During the 2014-2015 season, the power lines in PuntaCana will be undergoing a complete retrofitting. This will be done using specially designed products to insulate the energized wires on each pole. Retrofitting power lines is costly and the first phase of the project is expected to cost close to US $20,000.00.

While the 2014 release season is still going, preparations are underway for the following nesting season in LHNP and to release another group of approximately 25 hawks in Punta Cana. Dominican field technicians, Valentine Cespedez and Misael Calcano are tracking the hawks daily and bring encouraging reports that some of the newly released hawks have been consistently seen with B-44, the male hawk who hatched in the wild in PuntaCana in 2013. We have high expectations that we will be seeing more pairs of Ridgway’s Hawks in the Punta Cana area in 2015 and with this more hope for one of the most critically endangered raptors in the world.