The Bahama warbler has an extremely small habitat. As a result, even small events can endanger the species. Hurricane “Dorian” was devastating in 2019 and may be the death knell for the bird species.
A critically endangered bird population in the Bahamas may have been largely wiped out by Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Scientists at the University of East Anglia in Norwich fear that there may now only be a single island population.
In Grand Bahama, much of the habitat of the Bahama warbler (Setophaga flavescens) was destroyed by “Dorian”. However, it is at least certain that the only other population on the neighboring island of Abaco (Great Abaco and Little Abaco) survived.
Already in the decades before “Dorian”, the pine forests in which the birds live had been badly affected by hurricanes and human intervention. Two researchers from the team led by Diana Bell from the University of East Anglia searched the typical habitats of the species in Grand Bahama for three months in 2018. They also played the animals’ songs to attract possible specimens in the area. At that time, there were still sightings in 209 of the 464 places examined, especially in the forests in the center of the island and in the east, as the team reports in the journal “Bird Conservation International”.
Grand Bahama is one of the northernmost islands in the Bahamas. The island, which is popular with tourists, was badly hit by the hurricane in September 2019, as were the two main Abaco islands, Great Abaco and Little Abaco, which are connected by a road dam. Even before “Dorian”, one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever measured, passed through, the small, grey-yellow bird with a long beak was only found on these islands. It is now largely unclear how the endangered species is currently doing.
The Bahamas, an island state in the Atlantic, has a total of more than 700 islands, only about 30 are inhabited. According to the scientists, far more needs to be done for the species that live there. “Although more than half of the Bahamas’ endemic birds are classified as critically endangered, there has been little international effort to improve the situation,” said Diana Bell.
