Project
State of Nature Caribbean Netherlands 2025
The kingdom of the Netherlands carries responsibility for the implementation and execution of seven international treaties concerning the natural resources and biodiversity of the Caribbean Netherlands. For this up-to-date knowledge is needed on the “State of Nature” as related to the various species. In 2022 in this project we will fill key knowledge gaps on the deepwater fishes and the pelagic seabirds of the Dutch Caribbean. Most of these are not considered endangered by the IUCN but, nevertheless, make an important contribution to the overall biiodiversity of the Caribbean Netherlands and also play crucial roles in ecosystem functioning.
The required process of updating nature policy plans every five years also necessitates regular evaluations and assessments of the state of nature as related to the various species and their habitats. In this project the focus in 2022 will be to publish the previously compiled inventories of deepwater fish fauna of the Leeward Dutch Caribbean (work from 2021 and earlier) and the habitat distribution of seabirds in the openwater pelagic realm of the Caribbean. The later will be based on a database of more than 150 thousand seabird records previously compiled by WMR in 2020 (WMR report C080/20).