Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 28
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RE W I L D I NG
When you set out to go rewilding,
don’t just monitor the main thing
you’re targeting, monitor everything.
pier, and I looked out to sea, and I just sat there
with my binoculars. I raised my binoculars up
and there were just thousands of red-footed
boobies and frigate birds streaming past me,
going on to these islands. I’ve been a fanatical
birder all my life, and sitting on that pier on
Diego Garcia, I thought, I’m going to commit
myself. I was on the island for three days, and
I knew I was going to commit myself to doing
something for the Chagos Archipelago.
My second moment came when there was a
visiting party of British Members of Parliament
coming over to the Chagos Archipelago and I
was hosting them. I took them out to this island
group called the Three Brothers. We were in a
small craft, sailing toward the Three Brothers
at dawn. And one of the MPs tapped me on the
shoulder and said “I think that island’s on fire!”
And it wasn’t fire at all—it was seabirds leaving the island at dawn to go out into the ocean
to fish. There were red-footed boobies leaving
the side of the island like rapier missiles and
there were frigate birds circling up above like a
cloud of smoke and noddies flashing all around
us. And I said, that’s not smoke, that’s seabirds
leaving a pristine island.
Then the third time, when it really sunk
home that conservation is what I should be
doing with my life, was when I took the same
MPs to another island. And I asked one of
them, “do you think it has seabirds or not, or do
you think it has rats or not?” And I remember
saying, “look at the island. There is no noise,
no turtles around, no seabirds flying above.”
That’s when the hammer fell. I knew I had to
get involved in the conservation of the Chagos.
Daltry: When I first started working in the
Caribbean, the first task I did was at the invitation of the government of Antigua to try and
save the Antiguan racer snake, which was down
to about 50 individuals. We realized they were
being eaten by rats on the islands. The snakes
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