<
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/meet-the-millennium-forest-a-unique-tropical-island-reforestation-project/>
"Birds were probably the first colonizers to arrive. Some likely carried seeds,
perhaps stuck to their feathers. Most of those seeds didn’t survive. Some did.
Insects followed. And for 14 million years or so, the tiny island of St. Helena
in the South Atlantic Ocean, located midway between Africa and South America,
was left to the whims of nature. Hundreds of species evolved here, suited
solely to the little island’s surprising number of habitats.
“There was vegetation to the waters’ edge, teeming with invertebrate, bird and
marine life. Taller and bushier vegetation in central peaks, and then
shrubbier, low-growing vegetation in drier areas,” says Martina Peters, the
head of terrestrial conservation at the Saint Helena National Trust, describing
the island as it looked when humans first arrived.
Covering just 122 square kilometers (47 square miles), an area smaller than the
New York borough of Brooklyn, the island once supported at least five distinct
ecosystems and more than 79 plant species found nowhere else, along with 420
invertebrates. Its remoteness — 1,950 kilometers (1,210 miles) west of Africa’s
southwestern coast, and 4,000 kilometers (nearly 2,500 miles) east of Rio de
Janeiro — protected its native flora and fauna.
In 1502, everything changed. Humans discovered the little island and introduced
goats, rats, cats, rabbits and other invasive species; prior to this, the
island had no mammals, reptiles or amphibians. Some 150 years later, the
British set up the first permanent colony, and cut down every tree they could
reach. Denuded, the island began suffering from erosion, while the plants that
did thrive were often non-native. Less than 1% of St. Helena’s original
ecosystems survived the centuries-long onslaught.
Enter Rebecca Cairns-Wicks in 1999: “The island [population] was invited to
submit ideas for how to celebrate the millennium on the island, so that was the
impetus” for its first major restoration.
Cairns-Wicks, who was then the environmental coordinator for the St. Helena
government, proposed an idea both ambitious and community-oriented: What if the
Saints (as the island’s 4,500 inhabitants call themselves) came together to
reforest a portion of the island once known as the Great Wood with native
species? That project was one of just two selected for the island’s millennium
celebration."
Via
Future Crunch issue 190:
https://futurecrunch.com/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
