The Ridgeway Hawk Project in Punta Cana

The Ridgeway Hawk Project is a project dedicated to increasing the native hawk population in the Dominican Republic.  We met a researcher from Argentina who has dedicated his time to this project for many years. The project aims to help the population reach its proper natural population with as little human involvement as possible. Some of the problems they have faced include electrocution, hunting, and parasites.

When the hawks sat on power lines and they touched a negative and one out of three positive lines at the same time, they died, so the Ridgeway Hawk Project partnered with a local electrical company and made the lines safer for the birds. In the Dominican Republic, one’s animals can be their livelihood; therefore, when the hawks would eat the young chicks, they would be hunted and killed. So the project builds chicken coops for the locals to protect their chickens from the hawks, indirectly protecting the hawks themselves. Their most relevant problem right now is a parasite called Bot Flies which infect the Hawk’s nest. The flies lay their eggs underneath the skin of the birds and the larva live off the blood of the young hawk causing them to die of anemia and other related health issues. Their solution was to climb a tree to the hawk’s nest and remove the larva from underneath the hawk’s skin. This causes severe stress in the hawks and was not a sustainable solution. The project was inventive and created a method to treat the nests in a preventative measure, however it was still necessary to climb the nests to treat it. They are currently trying to explore more sustainable methods to treat this parasite epidemic.

Submitted by Catherine Klinkam, Loudoun County