Mauritius turns wildlife clock back 400 years

By Ed Harris

ILE AUX AIGRETTES, Mauritius (Reuters) - Giant tortoises doze in the shade as rare lizards slip under bushes and endangered birds chatter in the sunlit trees overhead.

On a small wooded island off southern Mauritius, environmentalists are trying to turn back time to an era before humans ever set foot on the volcanic Indian Ocean archipelago.

"We want to turn the clock back 400 years," says Ashok Khadun, a conservation expert with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF), a local non-governmental organisation.

Sadly, they are too late to help the Mauritius giant skink -- a type of large grey lizard -- its broad-billed parrot, scops owl or lesser flying fox, and many other species now extinct.

Separate from the continents since it emerged from the seas some eight million years ago, the island developed hundreds of unique species of flora and fauna that evolved in isolation.

But the arrival of Europeans led by the Portuguese in the 16th century triggered an ecological disaster with the slashing of forest habitats and the introduction of predators like rats.

By far the most famous victim was the flightless dodo bird, which is believed to have died out in the late 1600s.

SEEING RESULTS