Key Habitats Program

DCNA used the internationally recognized Conservation Standards framework to develop the program in a structured, evidence-based way. This approach guided the network in setting clear, measurable goals, selecting priority habitats, assessing ecosystem health and identifying the most pressing threats to nature in the Dutch Caribbean. By making strategic choices about where to focus limited resources, the program is both realistic and effective, and is supported by conservation partners across all six islands.

Science provides the foundation for the program’s strategy, monitoring, and decision-making. Using the Conservation Standards, DCNA has defined Key Ecological Attributes (KEAs) and indicators to track ecosystem health and guide adaptive management.

Monitoring builds on existing global data, remote sensing and practical methods, allowing the program to track changes efficiently across habitats and islands. While the upcoming funding calls focus on on-the-ground conservation actions, scientific expertise remains essential for interpreting results, learning, and refining methods. DCNA will continue to explore ways to engage the scientific community alongside program implementation.

Collecting species-level data consistently across all six islands is challenging. By focusing on the size and condition of habitats, the program can use clear, comparable indicators that show the overall health of ecosystems across the Dutch Caribbean. This approach gives a reliable, big-picture view while still supporting biodiversity.

The program uses reliable global datasets, like the Allen Coral Atlas and Global Mangrove Watch, as reference points. This ensures that indicators are based on consistent, objective information, helping us see real changes over time and avoid treating already degraded conditions as the “new normal”.

We work closely with local and national governments to align efforts and provide support where it’s needed. This collaboration ensures that implementing partners can contribute effectively, complementing government actions and maximizing impact on the ground.

The Key Habitats Program is designed to be locally managed and implemented, focusing on areas where PMOs (Protected Area Management Organisations) and NGOs have the expertise and mandate to make the greatest impact. Deep-sea habitats fall outside this local operational scope, so they are addressed through other initiatives.

The Saba Bank is a unique and extensive ecosystem, larger than all six islands combined. Including it in this regional framework could overshadow island-scale efforts. Its remote location and distinct ecological dynamics mean it benefits from a dedicated conservation plan. By concentrating on island habitats, this program ensures targeted, practical actions that strengthen local ecosystems while complementing broader initiatives like those for the Saba Bank.

 Yes, these areas were carefully considered in the program design, but have not been included as separate ecosystems with their own strategies in the first version of the program.

• Urban Biodiversity: While monitoring across all six islands is not yet consistent enough to set reliable indicators, urban areas remain important, and future efforts could build on local data.
• Beaches, Dunes, and Rocky Coastlines: These ecosystems are closely linked to mangroves, seagrass, coral reefs, and dry tropical forests. By protecting those key habitats, beaches, dunes, and rocky coastlines are indirectly safeguarded.

Caves and Karst: These areas benefit from the conservation of surrounding forests and wetlands. Including them separately would have spread resources thin without adding measurable conservation value.

While coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass are technically ecosystems, DCNA chose the term Key Habitats to make the program more accessible and relatable. “Habitat” is easier to visualize and understand, helping people connect with nature.

The term also highlights where conservation and restoration happen, on land or in the water, and aligns with key policy frameworks like the Nature and Environment Policy Plan (NEPP) and BES policies. This makes the program practical, action-focused, and inclusive beyond the scientific community.

We chose globally available datasets like Global Mangrove Watch because:

• They are consistent across all six islands.
• They provide long-term, standardized time series (back to 1996).
• They don’t depend on the capacity of individual islands to collect field data.

While local datasets are often more precise, they vary in quality and coverage. By using global datasets, we trade some precision for comparability and consistency over time. Although these datasets may not be 100% accurate in absolute numbers, they are consistent in how they measure change. This means that even if mangrove extent is slightly under- or overestimated, the overall trends of gains and losses are still reliable. As the project develops, this baseline can be improved through the establishment of a consistent monitoring plan across all six islands (or, for mangroves, the four islands where they occur) or updating existing data sets manually with missing data (GIS).

At present, local monitoring efforts are too fragmented to provide consistent long-term trends across all islands. As projects expand, we hope to incorporate more detailed health indicators, but for now, global datasets provide the necessary baseline.

Species-level monitoring is inconsistent across the six islands. Instead, we measure habitat-level extent (e.g., live hard coral cover) which provides a comparable, regional picture. While A. palmata is critically endangered, tracking it separately would have required a level of species-specific monitoring not available everywhere.

We acknowledge that the existing GCRMN survey sites are not evenly distributed and may not fully capture the diversity of reef conditions across the Dutch Caribbean. However, they provide one of the few long-term, standardized datasets available across all six islands, which is critical for regional comparability. To address these limitations, we use the data cautiously, focusing on trends rather than absolute values, and complement it with other datasets where possible. Over time, we aim to work with partners to expand monitoring coverage and improve the representativeness of survey sites, while still maintaining the consistency needed for regional analysis.

While the current strategic analysis highlights Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) under the Invasive Alien Species and Disease pressure, it is understood that other emerging diseases could also pose significant risks to biodiversity in the Dutch Caribbean. At this stage, new diseases will be addressed under Strategy 5.8, which emphasizes adaptive management and monitoring to respond to unforeseen threats. In addition, DCNA will explore the possibility of creating a new strategy that advocates for island governments to establish clear policy frameworks and take responsibility for emergency measures. This would increase accountability and ensure faster, more coordinated responses to natural disasters and public safety crises, including those not directly linked to climate change.

Coral restoration was not included in the Implementation Plan because, to have meaningful impact at a regional scale, it would require a level of investment that is currently beyond the program’s capacity. Instead, the focus will be on addressing underlying pressures, such as improving water quality, reducing the impacts of invasive species and disease, and mitigating the effects of climate change that directly affect coral health. By reducing these stressors, the program aims to create conditions where coral reefs have a greater chance to recover naturally. If these measures do not deliver the desired improvements, coral restoration can be re-evaluated as a potential strategy in the future.

While wastewater treatment is recognized as one of the most critical actions for improving nearshore water quality, the scale of investment and infrastructure required places this responsibility firmly within the mandate of island governments. The implementation plan therefore does not focus on developing wastewater treatment plants or alternatives directly. Instead, the program prioritizes complementary, nature-based solutions, such as wetland and mangrove restoration, that can help filter pollutants, reduce nutrient loads, and mitigate some of the impacts of untreated wastewater on coral reefs and seagrass beds. These approaches provide measurable benefits within the scope of available resources, while also reinforcing the need for long-term governmental action on wastewater infrastructure.

Nature-based solutions use natural processes or structures to improve environmental conditions in a sustainable way. For water quality in nearshore environments, this could include tools such as living seawalls or reef balls, which not only help filter and trap pollutants but also provide complementary benefits. These structures can dissipate wave energy to reduce coastal erosion, create new surfaces for benthic life to grow, and enhance habitat for reef fish and other marine species. By investing in these approaches, the program aims to strengthen ecosystem resilience while also improving water quality in ways that support biodiversity and community benefits.

DCNA fully acknowledges the cultural and historical role that free-roaming grazers such as goats, sheep and donkeys play on the islands. They are part of local traditions, livelihoods, and landscapes, and any discussion of their management must recognize these sensitivities.

At the same time, the ecological reality is that without active management, populations quickly exceed sustainable thresholds. This leads to overgrazing, which causes soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and long-term damage to terrestrial and coastal ecosystems. In principle, maintaining grazer populations below critical thresholds would be an option, but this requires constant and intensive management, including regular culling, monitoring, and enforcement.

After careful consideration, the strategic position has been taken that the only truly sustainable number of free-roaming grazers is zero. This does not mean eliminating grazers altogether, but rather ensuring that they are kept within designated, managed areas where their presence can contribute to cultural heritage, local markets, and even tourism in a way that does not threaten the islands’ natural ecosystems.

In short: DCNA recognizes that the problem is not the grazers themselves but the impact of overgrazing. However, to prevent this impact in a practical and lasting way, free-roaming grazing must end, and management must shift toward designated and controlled areas.

Our indicator measures binary goat presence, whether an area is free of goats or not. Even a handful of goats can eventually lead to re-establishment, so DCNA has chosen to not count partial reductions in their measure of success. This means progress may appear as “0%” until the final goats are removed, at which point areas shift rapidly to “100% ungrazed”.

Saba has active eradication campaigns, so large shifts are expected soon. Statia has a fenced enclosure, but these are small and not yet enough to change the indicator.

We deliberately kept the indicator simple: grazed vs. ungrazed. This makes it measurable and comparable across islands, avoids subjective thresholds, and ensures that only areas with full recovery potential are counted.

Other pressures in wet forests (such as rats, cats, and chickens) may impact biodiversity but not the geographic extent indicator we use. We have opted against including biodiversity monitoring at this stage, as it is labor intensive and not yet conducted consistently across all six islands. For now, focusing on the geographic extent of protection provides a practical and trackable indicator. In the future, the program may expand to include complementary biodiversity monitoring once a standardized approach can be established regionally.

No, smaller islands such as Klein Curaçao will not be excluded. The program’s scope will be revised to ensure that these areas are considered where they are ecologically relevant. While they may be small in size, these islands can play an important role in biodiversity, serving as nesting grounds for seabirds, resting sites for migratory species, or unique examples of dry forest and coastal vegetation. At the same time, we recognize that data availability is uneven, particularly in the case of Curaçao, where there are known gaps. These gaps will be clarified in the revised documentation, and as monitoring capacity improves, the inclusion of smaller islands will help provide a more complete regional picture of forest health and resilience.

At this stage, there is not enough reliable or consistent data available across the islands to refine the evaluation criteria for wet forest health or to add indicators such as species composition or condition. To maintain consistency in methodology across all habitat types and ensure results can be compared regionally, we are keeping the evaluation framework simple and focused on geographic extent and integrity. While we recognize that more detailed indicators could provide valuable insights, they would require long-term monitoring and standardized data collection that is not yet in place. As monitoring capacity grows in the future, these additional indicators may be considered, but for now, the emphasis remains on using practical, comparable metrics that can be applied across all six islands.

Yes, Simpson Bay Lagoon was carefully considered. However, the regional Allen Coral Atlas dataset we used does not fully capture lagoonal habitats. Similar exclusions exist for other islands. While not perfect, the Atlas provides the most consistent regional picture available. Much like the mangrove situation, we have prioritized consistency over time to identify trends, even if absolute coverage is not exact. As the project progresses, we aim to improve this baseline by developing a six-island monitoring protocol that will provide more accurate and comparable data across habitats. Additionally, it might be beneficial to update existing data sets manually with missing data (GIS).

Satellite imagery cannot reliably separate invasive species from native species. If we excluded invasive seagrass altogether, it would eliminate seagrass from islands like St. Eustatius, which still provides important ecosystem functions. For this reason, we measure total seagrass extent while recognizing invasive dominance as a critical management challenge.