Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 25
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RE W I L D I NG
Islands host an estimated
40 percent of all globally endangered
and threatened species.
The Chagos Archipelago is in the Indian
Ocean. If you draw a straight line down from
India and another straight line across from Madagascar, they will intersect at the Chagos. About
32 of the Chagos islands are environmentally
degraded. So coming back to the question—is
eradication enough? Well, pulling on research
from Palmyra (a coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean)
and the Chagos Archipelago, we can say the
answer is no, eradication is not enough.
So what I’ve been doing with the Chagos
Conservation Trust is to produce a rat eradication plan, which we’ve finished, and now we are
doing a vegetation management plan. We know
it’s feasible and we know it can have a positive
impact. We looked at the 32 islands in the most
need of help, and we’ve prioritized two islands
that could be rewilded and won’t be reinvaded
by rats, as well as a few other islands. Importantly, we can also put a cost on how much to
do it. So it’s not just a green dream any more.
We know how to do it, and we know how much
it should cost.
And why is that?
Carr: When humans first colonized these
islands, not just in the Pacific but also in the
Indian Ocean, they brought invasive species
with them—rats, cats, pigs, dogs—and they
did a lot of the damage, but some of the damage was done by man changing the landscape
of the island. They cut down the native forests and changed the native habitats to build
settlements. And a lot of the islands in the
Pacific and the Indian Ocean were farmed
for coconut. And my research in the Chagos
Archipelago, and other work done in Palmyra,
has revealed that abandoned coconut plantations are no good for biodiversity.
There are three things that thrive in these
abandoned coconut plantations: Mosquitoes, rats, and chickens. None are good for
biodiversity.
And what about other areas of the world?
Jenny, how has your work in the Caribbean and
Asia evolved over the last few years, and how
are we doing in terms of conservation there?
Jenny Daltry: I started working in the Caribbean in the ’90s. The Caribbean is one of the
great biodiversity hotspots and it’s also the
region with the highest rate of species extinctions. Over the years, I’ve worked with local
partners to bring back some of those species
from the edge of extinction. I’ve also seen a
number of catastrophes and experienced the
climate breakdown. I’ve seen how nature can
help us when no one else can.
To give some examples of the kind of restoration we do, we’ve restored 30 islands by
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