I had the privilege of sharing several days on St Helena with Mike Jervois and Lourens Malan from the Saint Helena National Trust and Environmental Management Division of Saint Helena Government flying drones in the Peaks National Conservation Area during November. We completed several flights within the conservation area to map Wells Gut and Grapevine Gut as part of the Darwin Plus funded project DPLUS051, Water Security and Sustainable Cloud Forest Restoration on St Helena. As well as mapping the two guts, we were testing drone aerial photography to support the management of the conservation area.
In many parts of the world, being able to evaluate the health of endemic biodiversity can be a challenge due to the steep and inaccessible terrain. We created orthomosaic photographs of the two guts as part of the project ecology surveys. The photographs enabled Mike to plan ecology surveys within the study area and assess the percent of the forest canopy that comprised endemic and invasive plant species. Lourens was particularly interested in using aerial photography to assess areas of the Peaks that need invasive plant removal and restoration, check progress on invasive plant clearance and to assess recovery of the endemic biodiversity on an annual basis through comparison of aerial images and ground assessments.
We spent several weeks planning the aerial surveys as the study area is within the restricted fly zone for St Helena airport, which opened in April 2016. Many thanks to Air Safety Support International for supporting our permission to fly within the restricted fly zone and to St Helena Airport for advice, guidance and clearing the flights plan.
