Assessing the plant diversity of the British Virgin Islands

In 1998, staff from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew joined a consortium of partners, funded by the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative, in a project to study the biodiversity of an existing national park on Virgin Gorda and an important wetland area on Anegada. As well as surveying the vegetation of the two sites, Kew’s aim was to enable local partners, principally the British Virgin Islands National Parks Trust, to gain experience in biodiversity assessment and conservation planning.

Since 2002, Kew has been involved in a second Darwin Initiative funded project to document Anegada’s coastal biodiversity. Focussing on plants, birds and sea-turtles,
the project’s goal is to develop an action plan for conserving the island’s natural sand-dune and limestone habitats which are home to plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Kew’s botanists have already identified several new populations of threatened plant species, including the cactus Leptocereus quadricostatus, and the legume Senna polyphylla var. neglecta, which had previously been known from just two plants. Working with the botanists, island schoolchildren are rediscovering local knowledge about plants and their uses.

(Project website www.seaturtle.org/mtrg/projects/anegada)