The St. Maarten Nature Foundation in collaboration with the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance held an informative meeting on the Dutch Caribbean Biodiversity Database with Dutch Nature Database Scientists Stephan Hennekens and Peter Verweij of the Alterra Institute of Wageningen University. A presentation was given to various private conservation practitioners, Non-Governmental Organizations and representatives from the St. Maarten Government Department of Statistics and the VROMI Ministry on how the Nature Foundation and Man of War Shoal Marine Protected Area, other conservation organizations and practitioners in the Windward islands can fine-tune and upload their information regarding the environment into the Dutch Caribbean Biodiversity Database. The goal of the Dutch Caribbean Biodiversity Database is to guarantee the long-term availability of information resources, maps, research and monitoring data for everyone involved in nature conservation in the Dutch Caribbean and thereby to support nature management and assist in the fulfillment of international reporting obligations.
On St. Maarten the team worked with the Nature Foundation on data sets which included monitoring data on sea turtles, Brown Pelicans, lionfish, sharks, coral reefs, water quality and marine mammals. Volunteer data collectors and government employees from the Departments of Statistics and Infrastructure and Environment enthusiastically joined the discussions.
The team is now on Saba where the focus is on monitoring data for the Red-billed Tropic birds, fisheries and marine mammals as well as archiving a wealth of information from the Saba Conservation Foundation archives. The team heads to St. Eustatius on Tuesday where the focus will again be on monitoring data for marine mammals, Red-billed tropic birds, sea turtles and lionfish, as well as Statia's data sets on butterflies, terrestrial birds, conch, and lobster.
