DÉCOUVERTE
“ Mauritius is one of the most ecologically devastated places in the world ,” says the biologist Vincent Florens . How did both of you get involved in conservation ? Mary-Ann : Owen is an Australian biologist . We met there , and returned to Mauritius in 1984 . Owen : We set up Bioculture Ltd , where we breed monkeys for biomedical research and crocodiles . We have always felt , morally , that we should give something back to nature if we were making a living from nature . As things developed , we became more involved with conservation for the sake of conservation . Mary-Ann : We have a brilliant team at our side - Dr . Christine Griffiths ( no relation !) is the Conservation Project Manager at Ebony Forest , for instance . She worked for the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation for a decade . Owen : Our conservation efforts are also evolutionary , in the sense that when we started La Vanille Crocodile Park we began by breeding giant tortoises . We never thought about Rodrigues . We were so successful in breeding these tortoises , that we started thinking about what we could do with all of them – and Rodrigues felt like the right place ( NB : when Francois Leguat first arrived in Rodrigues in 1691 , he famously noted that there were so many tortoises on Rodrigues that one can take more than a hundred steps on their shells without touching the ground . Due to the island ’ s ecological devastation , many of those tortoises had disappeared ). We then recreated the original ecosystem on the island , in the François Leguat Giant Tortoise Reserve .
How did Ebony Forest come about ? Owen : I am very interested in land snails . A third of land snails in the Mascarenes are extinct , a third are critically endangered . Their extinction is caused by the usual things – destruction of forest , invasive species . I started questioning the reasons for their habitat loss , which brought us to Mauritian native forests and what to do about them . We acquired our first block of forest fifteen years or so , in La Vallée de l ’ Est , and we have been busy restoring the forest since then . Restoration involves two things : removing the weed species , and replanting native species that we grow in our nurseries . We acquired Ebony Forest ( in Chamarel ) in 2006 , and along with our restoration efforts , we have turned it into a site of eco-tourism and education ( with programmes catering to different age groups ). Mary-Ann : A vital step is getting the seedlings from the forest , those that will not develop there since they get eaten by all the introduced animals . We take the seedlings and grow them in their hundreds , and once they ’ re ready , we replant them . ( NB : since 2006 , they ’ ve weeded over 13 hectares and grown over 130,000 indigenous plants ).
Owen et Mary-Ann Griffiths à Ebony Forest à Chamarel Owen and Mary-Ann Griffiths at the Ebony Forest in Chamarel © Kathleen Minerve
And what of Madagascar ? Owen : We set up our NGO there in 2003 , to support conservation efforts . We work with local communities to protect two threatened forests , Beanka and Sahafina . Mary-Ann : There are indigenous primates in Madagascar . We wanted to give back to the primates there – and they ’ re in grave danger . Owen : Logging and hunting are illegal in Madagascar , but these laws are poorly enforced . But if you have presence , and you have the local community involved in protecting the forests , then that dissuades people who want to carry out illegal activities . Mary-Ann : Because of the poverty levels in Madagascar , you really have to look at the way people live . You need to give them alternatives , advice on growing their own food ¬– raising chickens , for instance . You empower them in that way . Those who work for us are often gaining a salary for the first time in their lives . Owen : And now we want to reintroduce Aldabra giant tortoises in Madagascar , too , in our Sokatra Be (‘ Giant Tortoise ’ in Malagasy ) reserve in Beanka . We are also working to save the angonoka tortoises , a criticallyendangered species heavily prized by poachers because of their projecting gular scutes . When the tortoises are rescued , instead of bringing them back to Madagascar ( it is difficult to manage them there ), we give them a home in our reserve in Rodrigues , which is now the international rescue centre for the species .
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