Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 43
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RE W I L D I NG
Our best defense to a crisis is a healthy and resilient environment.
Vikash Tatayah and Jeremy Raguain are two such
people. Tatayah is the conservation director of the
Mauritian Wildlife Foundation and has been working in
conservation for more than 26 years. His projects have
led to the successful reintroduction of several endemic
bird and reptile species on Mauritius.
Raguain is from the Seychelles Island Foundation, and
is also pursuing a masters in public administration and
environmental science at Columbia University. Raguain
previously served on the Seychelles’ permanent mission
to the United Nations’ climate and ocean advisor.
We spoke to them about their sources of inspiration
and how action can truly speak louder than words.
invasive plants and putting back the native vegetation.
We have a nursery on the island and we grow between
55 and 60 species of endemic plants to put back on
the island and help the plants that were there restore
themselves.
And how’s that going?
Tatayah: After years of work, we have forests now, and
we have been able to bring back critically endangered
endemic birds of Mauritius, such as the pink pigeon, the
Mauritius fody, and the olive white-eye. Bringing these
birds back to the island has meant they are considered
to be in less danger of extinction than before. And aside
from the birds, we brought back the Gunther’s gecko
and Telfair skinks.
All of this work is ultimately good for species that
have survived somewhere, albeit threatened. But for
species that have gone completely extinct, like the
Mauritius giant tortoise, we have looked for surrogate
species. In this case, we chose the Aldabra giant tortoise, which comes from the island of Aldabra in the
Seychelles. It has worked so well, we’ve also put the
tortoises on other islands and on the mainland.
Could you tell me a bit about what you’re doing in
Mauritius?
Vikash Tatayah: I’m at the Mauritian Wildlife
Foundation, and we have been involved in restoring and rewilding sites in Mauritius and the island
of Rodrigues for more than 40 years. We’ve been
involved in rewilding many sites but one that I want
to talk about in more detail is Ile aux Aigrettes, which
is a small island of just 66 acres around 1,900 feet off
the southeast coast of Mauritius.
This island was important for us because it had an
original forest of hardwoods—a lowland coastal forest that has gone extinct everywhere else and only
survives in good numbers on this island. It has a history of human use—in the 1800s people cut corals
and chopped down the hardwoods to fuel settlements.
In World War II, the British had an establishment on
the island to try and keep the Japanese from invading
Mauritius. And in the 1960s and 1970s, the Mauritian
military used the island for many military exercises.
By the time we got involved with the island, there
were rats, cats, Asian shrews, iguanas, and more on the
island, as well as a host of invasive alien plants. Two of
the worst are the false acacia and the Madagascar plum.
We started by getting rid of the rats and the cats and
we’ve tried to reduce the numbers of the Asian shrews
and other species, too. We also started removing the
How do you get native species to return to these islands?
Tatayah: Getting rid of rats and cats doesn’t mean seabirds return on their own. We’ve done a project where
we were rearing the chicks of six species of seabirds and
we’ve been trying to attract a population of seabirds
back to the island, using recorded seabird sounds. Seabirds are so important to the health of the island and
the marine environment.
How do you get your average Joe invested in these
sorts of projects?
Tatayah: We opened the island for ecotourism in 1998,
and we now have thousands of visitors that come and
generate money for the Foundation. We also opened
the island up for education in 2009, and set up the
Learning With Nature program so thousands of children can come, many of them for free, every year and
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