Special Edition: State of Nature in the Caribbean Netherlands

Wageningen Research recently published an alarming report on the natural resources of the Caribbean Netherlands islands Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius, commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV). All 33 experts that worked on this report concluded that the “Conservation status1 of the biodiversity in the Caribbean Netherlands is assessed as moderately unfavorable to very unfavorable”. This applies to both the habitats and the dependent species. The biggest threats are free roaming feral livestock, invasive exotic species (species that do not occur naturally on the islands), climate change and overfishing. In addition, coastal development, erosion and eutrophication by waste water should not be forgotten. Because the threats are not sufficiently addressed, the experts view the future perspective as moderately unfavorable to very unfavorable.

In this special BioNews edition we summarized the findings by Wageningen Research (Debrot et al., 2018).

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