Mauritius: Invaders in Paradise

It is hard now to imagine what this island was like centuries before. It must have been really beautiful at one time. Mark Twain wrote,

“What there is of Mauritius is beautiful. You have undulating wide expanses of sugar-cane—a fine, fresh green and very pleasant to the eye; and everywhere else you have a ragged luxuriance of tropic vegetation of vivid greens of varying shades, a wild tangle of underbrush, with graceful tall palms lifting their crippled plumes high above it; and you have stretches of shady dense forest with limpid streams frolicking through them…” – Following the Equator, 1896

In more recent times new invaders have made this island noticeably less beautiful and, more to the point, less biodiverse. Some of these invaders are themselves beautiful to look at, but what they are doing to the island is not.

Article linked here.

Mauritius: Invaders in Paradise