Bermuda's distinctive nature reserve at Nonsuch Island would have held up well against Thursday's freak storm, conservationist Dr. David Wingate told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

Dr. Wingate had not yet been out to Nonsuch - the protected island which serves a living museum of what Bermuda was, ecologically, 400 years ago - because winds were still too high to make the crossing.

But he said that the native plants on Nonsuch and its heavily forested area would have stood strong against the winds which gusted up to 78 kilometres per hour on Thursday.

During Hurricane Emily in 1987, Dr. Wingate said Bermuda lost 35 percent of its biomass as plants and trees were broken, killed and uprooted.

"But on Nonsuch that loss was only five percent (after Emily)," he said.

Some of the plants will suffer from salt spray such as hack berry trees but even some good may come of that he added.

One area of concern however are the Cahow islands.

Dr. Wingate said storm surge can cause overwash on those island which hit Cahow nests hard. During the last two hurricanes - Felix and Gert - Dr. Wingate said 40 percent of the Cahows' nesting burrows were "trashed". The Cahows - relatives of the petrel - are unique to Bermuda and were thought to be extinct before Dr. Wingate helped to rediscover them in 1950. "I'm expecting some damage there but the seas were nowhere near as bad as during the hurricanes.

But Dr. Wingate added that since the Cahows are not currently nesting, he expected there would be time to get to the islands and repair the nesting burrows before the rare birds return home in late October.