MAURITIUS

Some eight million years ago, volcanic eruptions in the middle of the Indian Ocean created an island.  This island was later to be called Mauritius. Mauritius was home to some rare trees, plants and bird species, namely the dodo bird.

Mauritius may have been sighted over 500 years ago by the Arabs, but it is in 1598 that the Dutch first set foot on the island, on their voyage expeditions to the East Indies.  Following a violent storm, five of their ships find refuge in one of the bays, and there begins the exploration.  Soon after they discover an ebony tree species which is known as the best in the world.  The Mauritius ebony becomes legendary and the main mission of the Dutch settlement is to build up continuous stocks of this precious heartwood for Holland. 

This unfortunately leads to an intensive deforestation within the centuries that follow, during which the island is ruled as a colony under the Dutch, the French and the British. 

With the ebony trade, the forests along with all endemic species suffer into great decline.   This also caused the disappearance and the extinction of birds and insects endemic to Mauritius.

THE FOREST 

Today, the island is left with only 4 % of its native forest, and with most of its protected areas in high degraded state.   

Mauritius has been ranked by the IUCN as having the third most endangered flora in the world. 

The deforestation worsened by the arrival of exotic species which were invasive, and took over the cut down forests.  One of them is the guava tree which far outpopulated the endemic flora. 

Today in the effort of regrowing the original species, one of the greatest challenge is combatting these invasives.  The process of removing them is extremely labor intensive, but also once they are cut down, they often regrow even more aggressively than before. 

COMBATING INVASIVE SPECIES

We cannot say how much longer some of these rare species will continue to live on.  We do know that without our intervention, they can no longer expand their growth in the wild. 

Each plant has its unique properties and plays a vital role in this complex landscape which gave Mauritius its stunning beauty.  All the elements of this unique ecosystem is not fully known. 

What is amazing is that these plants which have originated from other places in the world, brought over by wind, ocean streams and birds, developed to become their own species and cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

CREATING BIODIVERSITY

The ebony trees which were on the island at the time of the Dutch landing may have been over several hundreds of years old.   Today the oldest tree does not exceed 200 years. 

According to the World Wildlife Foundation, today the biodiversity of the world is severely threatened.   The world’s greatest forests could lose more than half of their plant species by the end of the century due to deforestation and climate change.   The disappearance of one species alone can have an irreversible effect on the entire ecosystem.

The biodiverse endemic forests of Mauritius provide important ecological services such as recycling nutrient and rainfall, preventing soil degradation, mitigating natural disasters and fighting climate change. These forests are also the last refuge for the endemic fauna which are important pollinators and seed dispersers. The conservation and restoration of the endemic forests are particularly important for a small isolated island such as Mauritius because its ecosystems are more fragile and susceptible to the invasion of exotic species which have smothered the last survivors of the endemic forests. As temperatures rise, the biodiversity of our planet continues to be further threatened.

The uniqueness of each endemic species in Mauritius holds prevalent historical and cultural significance for the island’s inhabitants and carries important biodiversity relevant to the rest of the world.