Ile aux Aigrettes has to be the best riches to rags (and back to riches) story I've come across in a while.
The name means Island of Egrets.
Off the coast of Mauritius it is tiny. An islet. Only 65 acres. Round shaped and low lying with lush greenery that spills right into the warm tropical water. No beach to laze about on. But the history of this green speck is amazing.
Today it is a veritable Noah's Ark of wildlife and plant life from everywhere, it seems. Now a Nature Preserve and Research Center for Conservation...its story quite convoluted.
Before it was plundered by man (only 400 years ago) it was lush, green and filled with wildlife. Some of which existed nowhere else on Earth.
Then the ships came.
Forests felled for lumber.
Tortoises and Birds harvested for fresh meat.
First settled by the Dutch...most of the interior cleared for farming...then abandoned by 1710.
Five years later the French would claim to island and continue the ecological devastation.
Once the Europeans settled the island they introduced a misma of their own wildlife and plants.
They cleared much of the island and planted it with sugarcane.
The animals brought over preyed on the native animals and many species went extinct.
One of the last colonies of Dodos in the world went extinct on this island...taken as a food source both by humans and animals.
During WWII the British used it as a military base.
It is hard to imagine after slashing, burning, logging, sugar-cane farming, introduction of invasive species and decimation and extinction of the original that the tiny island could ever bounce back...
An eco-tourism/research/conservation site. Many of the invasive plants have been removed and replaced by the indigenous. Wildlife breeding programmes on the mainland help bolster the wildlife numbers...in some instances even keeping species from becoming extinct, then reintroducing them to the island.
The past two decades have been phenomenal.
https://youtu.be/VB7FeD2QKnU
Eco-tour
https://youtu.be/fRf6nkxaoSA
Next time we will explore: Solovetski
