Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust - Overseas Activities

Overseas Activities

Durrell works with local governments, communities and other conservation organisations in countries across the globe to save animals and their environments.

The Trust began working in Mauritius during the 1970s. In 1998 it announced that the Mauritius kestrel – a species once reduced to only four birds - had been saved from extinction. Durrell is also working to save critically endangered species such as the Pink Pigeon, Echo Parakeet, Round Island Boa (Casarea dussumieri) and Mauritius Fody. It has also helped in the restoration of Round Island – a small island about 12 miles north east of Mauritius.

The Trust is managing several projects on the island of Madagascar, where it first became involved during the 1980s. Madagascar, like Mauritius, is home to many animals found nowhere else in the world.

Project Angonoka is one of the successful breeding programmes that has seen the rarest tortoise in the world, the Angonoka, brought back from the brink of extinction. One of the rarest ducks in the world, the Madagascar Teal, is now breeding successfully at the Trust’s headquarters in Jersey, and the Alaotran Gentle Lemur is starting to make a recovery, now that hunting and burning of its habitat have been dramatically reduced thanks to an education programme targeted at local villages and schools.

In the Menabe region of Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot of great importance, the Trust is working with a cluster of endangered species, including the Malagasy Giant Rat, Flat-tailed Tortoise, Madagascar Big-headed Turtle, Narrow-striped Mongoose and Madagascar Teal.

In Brazil the Trust has played a major role in saving endangered Lion Tamarin, not only breeding them in captivity and reintroducing them into the wild, but with the purchase of a corridor of land to link two halves of a reserve where this species lives. The Trust is currently running an aluminium can recycling project in conjunction with local primary schools. The scheme is raising funds to purchase and plant trees in Brazil to create ‘tree corridors’, to link up fragmented areas of the tamarins’ habitat and allow isolated groups to reach each other and breed.

In India the critically endangered Pygmy Hog is successfully breeding in a centre designed and built by the Trust.

The Trust has also provided a safety net for two species living on the Caribbean island of Montserrat where a volcano erupted in 1995. The country's national bird, the Montserrat Oriole (Icterus oberi), and the Giant Ditch Frog (Leptodactylus fallax), are now living and breeding successfully in Jersey.

Durrell's overseas projects in other Caribbean islands include the Lesser Antillean Iguana (Iguana delicatissima) on Anguilla, the Antiguan Racer (Alsophis antiguae) on Antigua, the St Lucia Iguana (Iguana iguana), the St Lucia Parrot ("Amazona versicolor") and St Lucia Whiptail (Cnemidophorus vanzoi) on Saint Lucia, the Blue Iguana (Cyclura lewisi) on Grand Cayman, and the Cuban Solenodon (Solenodon cubanus) on Cuba.

Elsewhere in the world the Trust is working to save the Mallorcan midwife toad in Spain, the Western Lowland Gorilla in Cameroon, the Sumatran Orangutan in Sumatra, and Livingstone's Fruit Bat (Pteropus livingstonii) in the Comoros Islands.