Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States the Caribbean Community. OECS currently has ten Eastern Caribbean members, which together form a near-continuous archipelago across the Leeward Islands and Windward Islands. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and Martinique are only associate members of OECS. Diplomatic missions of the OECS do not represent the associate members. For all other purposes, associate members are treated as equals of full members. Six of the members were formerly colonies of the United Kingdom. Three others, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, and Montserrat remain overseas territories of the UK while Martinique, is a part of the French Republic as an overseas department and
Mammals of the Caribbean fauna particularly vulnerable to disruption by humans and the invasive species they introduced. (The large predator niches of the Caribbean islands were formerly occupied by endemic outsize hawks, falcons, caracaras, teratorns and owls—e.g. "Titanohierax", "Gigantohierax", "Buteogallus borrasi", "Caracara tellustris", "Oscaravis olsoni", "Ornimegalonyx" and "Tyto pollens"—all of which are now extinct. Cuban crocodiles also have more terrestrial habits than other extant crocodilians.) Opossums (order Didelphimorphia), the largest group of American marsupials, are of limited diversity in the Caribbean. The large opossum "Didelphis marsupialis" is found on Trinidad and Tobago and in the Windward Islands up to Dominica, being found on Martinique,