Oh, the difference a year makes! Last December, I made my way down to Statia to begin field work for an upcoming book about Statia’s wildlife with Terrestrial Parks Manager Hannah Madden. As 2015 comes to a close, we look at what has happened since then.
The project is to research, write and publish a book about the wildlife of Sint Eustatius. Like most of the Caribbean, it’s a place where we are still learning a great deal about the local fauna and ecology. Producing the book will increase our understanding of the island’s biology; but perhaps more importantly, it is a way to engage people – residents, children, tourists.
Our first intensive field research spanned a week in December 2014. We travelled the island, from the northern hills to the Quill, from the beach at Zeelandia to Oranjestad. From early morning hikes to late-night searches for nocturnal life, it was a deep immersion in the nature of the island and the island itself and we documented hundreds of species.
In January 2015, we launched Wild Statia in The Daily Herald’s “Weekender”. This series of articles has been running every other week since then – this is the 26th Wild Statia article. Producing a book takes time, but we have savoured this opportunity to share the wonders of Statia’s wildlife and pulled back the curtain a bit to show the process of researching the book.
Wildlife photography is an important part of the project. Images speak to the broadest possible audience and instantly engage. In March, we released a free set of screensaver and desktop wallpaper images featuring Statian wildlife and landscapes.
Additional field research sessions were conducted in April and November of last year, strategically spaced during different seasons to capture and document how seasonality impacts different species. This year, that meant visiting a parched island in April and a lush one in November.
To coincide with the November field work, we released a free eBook, Wild Statia, drawn in large part from these articles. Each of the 15 chapters takes a closer look at a specific animal, habit or phenomenon, and is filled with the kind of details that may not make it into a field-guide format.
As we finish the year, there is still much to do – additional research, identifying and cataloguing hundreds of photos, and writing the book itself. Hopefully, we will be able to complete this in 2016. In the meantime, please visit www.statiawildlife.com to get our free downloads and keep reading the Weekender to get updates on our progress.
By Mark Yokoyama
