Kristan Godbeer: Watching the Cayman Island Parrot Slip Away
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There is nothing quite like going for a hike in a tropical rainforest with an extremely knowledgeable scientist. Everything is pointed out and named in Latin, no symbiotic relationship goes unnoticed, and the critters you set out to see are more often than not, just where they were supposed to be. Or at least, that was the experience I was having in the Cayman Islands’ Mastic Reserve with local biologist, Kristan Godbeer.

Being a parrot expert and lover of any feathered thing that flies, Godbeer’s title of Terrestrial Ecologist for the Cayman Islands Department of Environment (DoE) was a little confusing. Terrestrial, at least to me, means land, not air. But on a small island, Godbeer explained, with a government invested in conservation only as much as it will help their image internationally, each of the few scientists working on conservation must be willing to wear many hats.

Godbeer certainly does that. While he would rather be out looking for either of the two endemic species of parrot found in the islands, he instead often finds himself doing lizard surveys, insect surveys, plant counts, or sitting at his desk looking for the funding that will pay his salary and most of the expenses associated with running the “federal” program. When these chores are done, he can then devote himself to what he loves and what he is trained for––parrot research. The Grand Cayman parrot (Amazona leucocephala caymanensis) is a 20-inch tall green bird, with red cheeks, a white forehead and a decidedly charismatic personality. These I had seen flying around the island in pairs, squawking at one another mid-flight like bickering couples, before settling down for the night, wing to wing with their mates. These, Godbeer told me, numbered about 2,000. The species I hadn’t seen, but was also a part of Godbeer’s research, was the Cayman Brac parrot (Amazona leucocephala hesterna) on nearby Cayman Brac Island, numbering just 300. The Brac parrot was apparently similar in appearance but much shier than their bold and boisterous Grand Cayman cousins.

Godbeer and I had arranged to meet at the south end of the Mastic Trail in the 754-acre Mastic Reserve on the east side of Grand Cayman at 4pm, just in time to see the parrots fly in and roost for the night. The hike started slowly with Godbeer stopping frequently to name every plant and animal, then explain how it interacts with other species, and finally, how it may have played a part in human history––a tedious pace for some, but for me it was just right. With his authoritative English accent and insistent but kind voice, I found myself wanting to listen to whatever Godbeer had to say. His severe facial features were etched with lines not from age, but from work, which led me to follow his every word as we trudged, ankle-, then knee-deep in tea-colored water, through the low, dry forest, growing up from sharp “karst” limestone formations.

Godbeer had grown up in Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town near Somerset in England’s West Country. While other boys his age were playing video games, Godbeer left home at 16 and went to work at the Rode Tropical Bird Garden. With more than 400 species, it was one of the largest collections of live birds in the world. ”I suppose it was my apprenticeship,” he said. The experience “has helped me immeasurably.” But living the dream wasn’t easy. “I lived in a very small caravan for two years, without electricity or running water.” He said. “I slept fully clothed with a hat on in the winter. I washed outside in a bowl.” But the work was stimulating and the expert tutelage of the owner, Donald Risdon, and the curator, Mike Curson kept him around. “I stuck it out, because I loved the job.” He said. After two years he moved into a new caravan with a toilet, water and a wood-burning stove. “I was in heaven.” He recalled.

When his apprenticeship at the bird garden concluded, Godbeer went on to the University of Wales in Bangor and graduated with an undergraduate degree in 2000 at the top of his class. He then went on to his masters at the University of Exeter's Centre for Ecology and Conservation in Cornwall. It was there that he was introduced to the Cayman Islands through a joint project between the Cayman Islands DoE and his university. With funding from the Darwin Initiative, Godbeer traveled to the Cayman Islands repeatedly to study the invasive monk parakeet. When he graduated in 2007, again at the top of his class, the Cayman Islands DoE offered him a full-time position as a terrestrial ecology research officer. Looking for a PhD project and having fallen in love with the islands, he accepted. “There really is a need for conservation initiatives on these islands.” He said, feeling that he could bring something to efforts already underway.

We stopped on a small dry rise and Godbeer kicked a bit of red soil with his boot. “There is almost no soil on the island.” He said. “This, they say, blows in from Africa.” As we continued, Godbeer pushed limbs aside and I failed to catch most of them before they hit me in the face. The Cayman parrots, Godbeer explained, are two subspecies of the Cuban parrot (Amazona leucocephala), and probably blew in on the same wind as that dirt a few million years ago. “What’s interesting though, is that the two parrot species on the Cayman Islands probably came here from Cuba independently of each other.” He said. This means that they didn’t island hop from Cuba to one of the Cayman Islands, then go on to populate the other islands. “If that were the case,” Godbeer said, “they would be more similar. And they’re not.”

Islands indeed promote a great number of fascinating species. But what makes studying biology on an island so interesting is also what makes it so depressing. The Grande Cayman parrot is just another species on a long list designated “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Cayman Brac parrot is considered “critically endangered.” Little Cayman, the archipelago’s third and smallest island, had a population of Cayman Brac parrots, but all were killed in a hurricane in the early 1930s––something that could conceivably happen on one of the larger islands.

Rounding a bend up to our knees in water, Godbeer explained some of the hurdles he faces in trying to save the Cayman Island parrots. Almost daily, Godbeer has to deal with poaching for the local and international pet trade, violence from farmers, devastating hurricanes, and a government only marginally committed to protecting its national bird. “Up until the 1970s the parrot was on the game bird list!” He said, referring to the list of species hunters were allowed to shoot for sport. More recently though, he has been fighting for more protected land on Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac, but he admits that he can’t push too hard. He is, after all, an employee of the government, and he needs his job. “I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall sometimes.” He lamented.

While poachers have proven above the law in one unprosecuted case after another, an increasing threat is hostile mango farmers. “One farmer claimed to have shot 100 parrots in a year!” Said Godbeer. That’s 5 percent of the population done in by one farmer in one year. “In a long-lived species, those numbers are unsustainable.” He said. The parrots feed mostly on fruit and when the mango season starts, many farmers sit on their porch with a shotgun and a vendetta. When I asked how much damage the parrots really do, Godbeer admitted, “Actually, it can be quite a lot. A bird will fly into a tree and take a bite of a mango, then see another and move on to that one without finishing the first.” He laughed. “Every mango on the tree can have a single bit out of it before too long.” This makes the fruit unsellable, and the farmers furious. “It doesn’t help that the parrots are smart and noisy.” He added. “I talked to one farmer who thought the parrots were laughing at him.” But not all mango farmers are hostile to the birds and the extensive public outreach done by Godbeer has helped educate locals and visitors alike. A quote by one reformed local farmer, Otto Watler, has become somewhat of a slogan for Godbeer, and now adorns the DoE web site: "The parrot is just as Caymanian as the Caymanian himself, and as long as time exists, should be allowed to grace our skies.”

Hurricanes, however, are entirely beyond Godbeer’s control, and are devastating on a small island less than 50 feet above see level. The most recent hurricane to strike was Paloma in 2008, which hit Cayman Brac and halved the already tiny population of 600 parrots. Before that, in 2004, Ivan destroyed Grand Cayman and killed an unknown number of parrots. “The damage was like a nuclear holocaust.” Godbeer recalled. “The forests were destroyed and parrots were walking around on the ground, starving and too weak to fly.” While the species has weathered many storms over the centuries, the combined factors of development, deforestation, poaching AND storms could prove to be too much for a long-lived species with a naturally small population. Godbeer explained a simple equation used by island biologists the world over: Less habitat = less of a given species = less of a buffer from storms = a decline in population. As we walked through the forest, Godbeer pointed out the few remaining royal palm and mahogany trees towering above the broken understory. Those tall trees, he explained, were the only suitable nesting sites for the Cayman parrot, and in their absence, the parrots would simply not breed. Another chink in the parrot’s chainmail is their reliance on the West Indian woodpecker and northern flicker, the only two birds capable of making the trunk-burrows the parrots use and as fragile a species as the parrots themselves. “Parrots have lived here for a long time.” Godbeer said. But it’s pretty clear that they may not be here forever.

If Godbeer is anything, he is realist. He’s too smart and he cares too much to be anything else. When it comes to the parrots, he’s not sugar coating the cold, hard truth that their extinction is a very real possibility in the near future. The island is just too small, the politics too backward, and the residents too set in their ways for the parrots to have much of a chance. “Politicians say sustainable development, and I hear deforestation.” Godbeer said as we sat in the forest waiting for the parrots to arrive for the evening. He hung his head between his knees, but rather it was from the heat or the depressing thought, I couldn’t tell. I heard a ruckus squawking somewhere in the distance as a large group of parrots approached and Godbeer, as if reminded by the sound, asked what has to be the most common rhetorical question in the island biologist’s répertoire: “Are we doing science here, or just recording the demise of a species?”