Endemics Plants and Animals

Ascension Island is most famous, animal wise, for its turtles. Hundreds of Green Turtles make the arduous journey from Brazil to Ascension to lay their eggs. We have yet to see a turtle but every beach is pockmarked with large craters where the turtles have dug holes to lay their eggs. There are the telltale trails of the turtles having hauled themselves across the sand each night and empty eggshells everywhere. It is now hatchling time and the young are now making their way to the ocean each night leaving a small trail too. We just need to stay up all night to see one!

Ascension Island was a very barren and unvegetated place until the Brits arrived. They brought trees and plants from all over the world to beautify the island but more importantly to create a rain catchment on the island mountain to provide a reliable source of water. Green mountain went from having ferns, grasses and mosses to a verdant tropical forest. The downside is that many of the native species are now rare. The Ascension Conservation Department is working to rehabilitate and increase the numbers of species. Below is one of the endemic and rare ferns and an invasive non native ginger species.

A similar fate has befallen the sea birds who nested on the island with the introduction of cats and rats. The feral cats are now gone, there are rat traps everywhere and the birds are beginning to return. There are still sheep and donkeys roaming wild on the island. The endemic Ascension frigate bird is only found on this island and we have seen them regularly scanning the beaches for young turtles.

Perhaps the oddest creature we have seen is the land crab that stays high in the mountains and comes down to the sea only to lay its eggs. There are 'warning land crabs crossing' signs everywhere and we had to swerve to avoid quite a number of them on the roads.