Western Indian Ocean Islands Nature Nonprofits

The islands of the western Indian Ocean, Réunion, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and their neighbours, are volcanic and coral fragments scattered across an enormous ocean, and their isolation produced species found nowhere else and, in several notorious cases, nowhere at all any more. The dodo lived on Mauritius, and it survived less than a century after people arrived.

Réunion rises steeply from the sea to a volcano that erupts regularly, and its interior of forested cirques and ravines is so rugged that a remarkable proportion of the island’s native forest survived simply because nobody could get to it. The Seychelles hold granite islands with palms and giant tortoises, and coral atolls that are among the most pristine in the world.

The organizations here fight invasive species, which on islands are almost always the primary threat, restore native forest, protect nesting turtles and seabirds, and confront coral bleaching in an ocean that is warming as fast as any. Island conservation is a demonstration of how quickly a unique world can be lost, and how much can be saved by acting hard and early.