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Island-Focused Mission: Resource Protection and Biodiversity Conservation

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. . . The small size of the Eastern Caribbean belies the rich biodiversity it supports. Typical of islands, the biota of the Lesser Antilles contains a relatively high percentage of single-island and regional endemics which, by definition, occur only here. The islands and their surrounding waters also support many migratory animals — endangered marine turtles, more than two dozen species of whales and dolphins, and some 150 bird species.

[Bruce Horwith, IRF Biodiversity Program Documents, 1994]

In the early 1970s, there were few active environmental organizations in the Caribbean . In the absence of broad collective responses to emerging environmental concerns, many of the Foundation’s earliest initiatives centered on conservation and environmental protection issues. Thus — long before it was called “biodiversity conservation” — Island Resources Foundation launched its own commitment to species protection in the region. It began with a turtle-tagging program that extended over six nesting seasons and resulted in the tagging of over twelve hundred green sea turtles at Aves Island , a primary nesting site for this endangered species.

The Foundation’s unique and traditional preoccupation with small island systems is balanced by a broader focus on conservation and protection issues. Island Resources provided counsel and professional planning assistance for many of the park and protected area systems that emerged in the region in the 1980s — including Antigua, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Panama (offshore islands), Jamaica, St. Kitts, Trinidad, and Venezuela (coastal park) — and continued into the twenty-first century with a seven-year assistance program for the National Parks Trust in the British Virgin Islands. Our priorities were always to encourage a Caribbean environmental ethic, to help conserve lands for public use, to promote environmental sustainability, and to support partnerships between public and private sector interests.

In the early 1990s, biodiversity conservation emerged as a newer, more holistic program emphasis. For the Foundation, it represents a logical extension of our more than 20-years of commitment to Caribbean conservation. In 1993, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and partner organizations and government agencies in Eastern Caribbean islands, the Foundation launched a new regional biodiversity conservation initiative.

The overall goal of the program is to facilitate and strengthen a process for improved national decision-making on strategic environmental issues, including the protection and preservation of threatened natural resources. Our biodiversity program strategy is shaped by four elements: support for technical studies and research; expansion of the region’s biodiversity information base; building institutional and individual biodiversity capabilities; and linking public and private sector interests in support of biodiversity programs. Biodiversity conservation provides a conceptual basis for much of the Foundation’s current programmatic development.