During the period September 14th to 17th, 2021, sixty staff members of the Forestry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Rural Transformation, Industry and Labour as well as volunteers will journey to five sectors positioned in remote locations of the interior forest of mainland Saint Vincent to conduct a National Parrot census of the Amazona guildingii.
In past years, the exercise of the census was conducted on a biennial cycle to determine an estimate of the endangered Saint Vincent Parrot population size in the wild. This was initially started in the year 1986 to determine the population and monitor the trends in the wild population. The most recent census of 2010 recorded an estimated 800 parrots. No census has been conducted since then.
The Ministry said that the recent eruptions of the La Soufriere volcano, along with the almost annual occurrences of extreme weather events have heightened the need to have a census to determine if these eruptions impacted the wild population.
An official statement from the Ministry said that this is made possible by resources receive from two Global Environment Facility funded projects, executed through the UNDP; Conserving Biodiversity and Reducing Land Degradation using a Ridge to Reef Approach, and the UNEP Integrating Water, Land and Ecosystems Management in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (IWEco) Projects.
