Africa

[Visited: January 2018]

Walking up the hills from the coast turns out a good exercise on mostly well marked trails, with great views of the turquoise waters just off the island of Rodrigues. I walk through fields where crops are being grown, reach the main road that crosses the island, and turn right to walk towards Grande Montagne. When I arrive at the headquarters of the reserve of the same name, I am told that the morning tour has just returned, and that the afternoon tour will start in two hours time. Fortunately, the guides are very friendly, and understand that I cannot wait for a couple of hours for the next tour, and one of them takes me up to the first floor where he guides me around a small museum. On display, amongst other things: the skeleton of a solitaire, a relative of the dodo that was wiped out shortly after the arrival of humans and their devastating exotic animals. Right next to it: the remains of an indigenous tortoise, also extinct.
We walk through a backdoor which takes us right into the forest. The primary rainforest is no more on Rodrigues, but the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation (MWF) is working hard to re-creating an environment that resembles the original flora and fauna of Rodrigues when it was first discovered by humans back in 1528. This is, of course, not entirely possible: several animals have disappeared from the face of the earth. Tortoises from the Seychelles will be imported and put to roam the park. Exotic plants and trees will be either cut or let to die, after which they will be replaced by endemic plants and trees. It is good my guide is there to point out both endemic and introduced flora: I would not have been able to distinguish between the two. He proudly shows that the workers are preparing spaces through which tortoises will be able to move, hopefully eating away lower bushes. The more he explains, the more I start to understand the difficulty of their task, and that the process to convert the park into an ecosystem resembling the one of Rodrigues of the 16th century will take many years to come.
The guide also shows me the exclusive and rare birds, like the Rodrigues fody and the warbler. Apart from these cute birds, we also see many spiderwebs high up in the air with big, black-and-orange spiders waiting for a prey to fly into their hardly visible sticky lines. But the most impressive story of Grande Montagne is when we come to the ramosmania rodriguesi, also called cafe marron. Long thought to be extinct, a schoolboy discovered this plant with delicate flower, which was then taken to Kew Gardens in London. The plant is still critically endangered, but at least growing both in its native Rodrigues, and also in a far away, famous garden in a different climate. Apparently, some visitors took parts of the few surviving plants away, which is one of the reasons why it is no longer possible to visit the Grande Montagne without guides. We walk further up the hill where we reach a viewpoint with a panoramic look on the east coast of Rodrigues. The guide points out how I can walk back there through roads and paths. We now also see how the park is surrounded by houses, fields used for agriculture, and roads. Intelligently, the reserve employs locals living nearby to work in the reserve, and educate them about the importance of preserving the habitat of endemic flora and fauna. When I walk to the east coast, it offers me a chance to view the Grande Montagne reserve from below.

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Reserve Grande Montagne (Mauritius)

Reserve Grande Montagne > Mauritius > Africa

[Visited: January 2018]

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