Planning how to save the mountain chicken

The project to save the mountain chicken, like many conservation projects, is not going to succeed overnight. It will take many years of hard work and cooperation by a range of people and organisations. How do you plan for something like this? The answer is you come up with an Action Plan!

An Action Plan is a plan that outlines the main objectives and targets for conserving the species and which organisations or groups will take overall responsibility for making sure they get done. To come up with one involves getting all the main partners and people together, usually over 3 or so days to discuss the progress so far and what needs to be done in the future. These workshops certainly aren't as fun as being in the forest but are very important!

Action Planning workshop for the mountain chicken, Montserrat 2013 (Photo: S-L Adams)

This is what took place in Montserrat last August to come up with a new combined Action Plan for the mountain chicken in both Montserrat and Dominica. It involved people from many organisations in Montserrat, Dominica and the UK and resulted in a 20 year action plan being agreed.

Mountain chicken taking an anti-fungal solution bath: trialling ways to treat chytrid (Photo: G. Garcia/Durrell)

Some of the main objectives in this that we will be working towards over the forthcoming years are:

1.         Making the mountain chicken a leading or flagship species for global amphibian conservation

2.         Discover or develop methods to treat chytrid in the wild

3.         Reintroduce and establish new populations of mountain chickens on Montserrat and Dominica

Montserrat Forestry staff being trained in how to swab and survey mountain chickens (Photo: S-L Adams)

There is a long way to go but there is a great group of people working on this and the project will train new local people in the various methods and skills needed to protect it. That way in the future the mountain chicken can be ensured by people living on the islands with minimal assistance from overseas making it far more sustainable, which would be a fantastic achievement.