2014 Yadua Taba Research Update
Report submitted by Peter Harlow, Taronga Conservation Society, Australia
In June 2014, an international research team spent six nights on the Yadua Taba Crested Iguana Sanctuary Island, and captured, marked, and released 194 iguanas in the quarter-hectare long-term study site. Thirty-five percent of these iguanas were recaptures from previous years, some originally marked by Suzie Morrison in 2005. The high density of Crested Iguanas on this single predator-free island is remarkable, and no other island in Fiji has such a dense population of iguanas. In addition, botanist Dr. Jenifer Taylor and her team re-measured and re-tagged all 591 trees that had been previously tagged in this study, giving us nine years of data on growth rates, attrition, and recruitment of four food-tree species known to be important in the diet of the herbivorous Crested Iguana.