FAO, EMA demonstrate bird-banding project in Tobago

The Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) have demon­strat­ed how bird-band­ing and da­ta col­lec­tion are help­ing to pro­tect To­ba­go’s bio­di­ver­si­ty, with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on the threat­ened White-tailed Sabrew­ing hum­ming­bird.

The demon­stra­tion was held on Tues­day at the Main Ridge For­est Re­serve in north­east­ern To­ba­go as part of a Unit­ed Na­tions Trinidad and To­ba­go mis­sion to mark UN Day.

About 35 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the diplo­mat­ic corps, de­vel­op­ment agen­cies, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly gath­ered at the Main Ridge Vis­i­tors’ Cen­tre for a brief­ing be­fore hik­ing to the Blue Cop­per Trail to ob­serve the trap­ping, band­ing and re­lease process.

The ex­er­cise was over­seen by in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cer­ti­fied bird ban­der De­ve­ka Boodram, a teacher at Spey­side High School, who was as­sist­ed by her En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence stu­dents. Par­tic­i­pants were al­so al­lowed to han­dle birds un­der the strict su­per­vi­sion of the ex­perts.

The ac­tiv­i­ty forms part of the BIORE­ACH project, fund­ed by the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty and led by the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, with the FAO serv­ing as im­ple­ment­ing part­ner.

The project col­lects sci­en­tif­ic da­ta on the White-tailed Sabrew­ing, which is clas­si­fied as threat­ened by the In­ter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Na­ture. The hum­ming­bird is found on­ly in To­ba­go’s Main Ridge For­est Re­serve and a small area of north­east­ern Venezuela.

The species is al­so con­sid­ered im­por­tant to To­ba­go’s bird-watch­ing tourism sec­tor.

Project ac­tiv­i­ties have gen­er­at­ed sci­en­tif­ic in­for­ma­tion on the bird’s ac­tiv­i­ty cy­cles and mat­ing sea­sons. Five To­bag­o­ni­ans have al­so re­ceived cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the North Amer­i­can Bird Band­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, strength­en­ing lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty for con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing.

FAO rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go Dr Gillian Smith said forests and hum­ming­birds played an im­por­tant role in main­tain­ing healthy agri-food sys­tems, with hum­ming­birds serv­ing as pol­li­na­tors es­sen­tial to plant growth and food pro­duc­tion.

She said ini­tia­tives such as BIORE­ACH helped train com­mu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue con­ser­va­tion work be­yond the project’s lifes­pan, sup­port­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and food se­cu­ri­ty.

BIORE­ACH tech­ni­cal ad­vis­er Asif Khan cred­it­ed the To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ty for the project’s suc­cess and ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the demon­stra­tion would cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther part­ner­ships.

The project is sched­uled to end in Ju­ly 2027. It al­so works with the Forestry Di­vi­sion to re­ha­bil­i­tate de­grad­ed land in Trinidad and To­ba­go and pro­vides farm­ers with train­ing in sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices.