June 2, 2006

OPINION

IS IT CONSERVATION OVERKILL?

A recent news article (SBC the 26th May 2006) involving an interview with Officers from the Ministry of Environment caught my attention.

The Officer highlighted in the program that the Ministry of Environment is in the process of cultivating thousands of “boie jolie ceour” on Mahe, which will be transplanted on Praslin in the future. The Officer highlighted the fact that this species of tree was not endemic to Praslin.

The relative isolation of the Seychelles Islands from the African mainland and Indian Continent and the vast distances between many islands has ensured that the islands have to an extent developed as individual biodiversity hotspots of their own, with their unique set of endemic species and habitat. There seems today amongst “reputed” Seychellois environmentalists, a push to introduce a situation where the same set of species of flora and fauna is to be established on as many of the Seychelles Islands as possible. This I find to be somewhat incongruent with the notion of the important protection and preservation of habitat and biodiversity. Although I do not work directly, in the environment domain, I considered the subject sufficiently important that I completed studies in environmental resource management at University.

During my studies (some of which involved a thesis on small island conservation and development impact), it became very apparent that the best preserved island ecosystems are those which have as little impact of man or other introduced flora and fauna as possible. The idea of introducing new species into a region or island where they were not previously naturally growing or living is by its very nature, a disturbance to the set of species available and it is likely, to have negative consequences such as the introduction of new plant and animal diseases, proliferation of introduced species and consequent impacts on growth of other endemic species, changes in the food chain, impacts on all associated endemic biodiversity and removal to an extent of the relative uniqueness of the different islands flora and fauna.

Let us all work to maintain the uniqueness of each island in Seychelles. As we are all unaware of the long term impacts of trying to introduce new species into a somewhat closed environment maybe we should try to leave the islands in the natural state that nature provided. Stop the race to see who can introduce the greatest number of species onto an island.

Endemic to one Seychelles Island does not suggest a need to make the species endemic to all Islands.

CONSERVATION CONSCIOUSNESS