by Rosa Pires, Parque Natural da Madeira Service
Funded by the Portuguese bank Espírito Santo’s Biodiversity Award, Parque Natural da Madeira Service has installed four cameras in the area most frequented by monk seals on land — in Tabaqueiro cave and on Tabaqueiro beach, on the Desertas Islands of Madeira.
The PNMS team was assisted by CBD-Habitat Foundation of Spain, which has been developing and perfecting this method of monitoring the monk seal population since 1994, at the Côte des Phoques in the Western Sahara. The teams have been collaborating on monk seal conservation since 2008, under the framework of the “Action Plan for the Recovery of the Mediterranean Monk Seal in the Eastern Atlantic”, established under the auspices of the Bonn Convention.
The main goal of the Desertas camera initiative is to improve seal monitoring in the nature reserve, gaining a better knowledge of seal behaviour on land, while improving the photo-identification catalogue of this population. Should it prove successful, this monitoring method will be maintained in the Tabaqueiro area but also expanded to other areas that are used or have high probability of being used by monk seals. We eagerly await the next reproductive season — which begins in November — when seals will again use the Tabaqueiro area!
Portugal