A New Dawn For Redonda

Removing goats and rats from a remote Caribbean island involved abseiling, catapults and nappies, as Jenny Daltry reveals.

- Jenny Daltry

What do Dirk Bogarde, Diana Dors and Ian McEwan have in common? How about Barry Humphries, Libby Purves and Sting? They are all dukes and duchesses of the fantasy realm of Redonda, a small but surprisingly tall island jutting out of the Caribbean Sea. Due to a quirk of history, for more than 150 years it has been the notional seat of a string of charismatic ‘kings’ who have awarded ‘peerages’ to friends in the arts. In the real world, Redonda is uninhabited and belongs to Antigua and Barbuda, 50km away. Over the past two years, it has become the focus of an exciting conservation project that aims to save its wildlife – including several endangered reptiles and major seabird colonies – and to restore the island to its former verdant glory. Redonda’s ecosystem is unique, with many species having evolved in isolation. Among the most specialised is the Redonda darkling beetle, found exclusively in the nests of brown boobies, relatives of the gannet. My personal favourite is the Redonda ground dragon – up to a foot long and jet black with flecks of sky blue. These lizards swagger around the island, getting into fights, stealing fish from the seabirds and basking spread-eagled on black rocks so hot you could fry an egg. A harder resident to love is the jumping cactus, which flings out painfully thorny segments if you get too close. At least I think that’s what it does. It is difficult to catch these cacti in motion, but they strike with enough force to drive barbed spines 2cm into your skin. Seabirds are still present too, albeit in lesser numbers than in the past. Most obvious are the famously tame boobies. Smartly dressed brown boobies, the goose-sized masked boobies and, in the crowns of ancient fig trees, the flamboyantly painted red-footed boobies, all with white powderpuff chicks. Among them are red-billed tropicbirds with white streamer tails, and the agile frigatebirds, which are aerial pirates. But, by 2016