Giant Tortoises Help 'Rewild' Nature Preserve

It was not too long ago that the tiny 62-acre island of Ile Aux Aigrettes, located in the Indian Ocean about one kilometer off the coast of southwestern Mauritius , was facing a dire future - Thanks to the incessant logging of its ebony forests, large parts of this once beautiful island were now barren.

What made it worse was that even though the logging was stopped in the 1980's the trees did not grow back, because the giant turtles that used to eat the fruit and disperse the seeds all over the island had also been been eradicated. Then in 2007, scientists from England's University of Bristol decided to try a totally radical idea.

Known by experts as 'Rewilding with taxon substitutes', it involved introducing a new species to fulfill the job of recently species - In this case it meant bringing in 18 Giant Aldabra tortoises to the island and letting them roam around freely to see if they could continue the pollination work that had been conducted by the two species of tortoise that had lived here previously.

While it has taken a few years, the lumbering tortoises seem to have pulled it off. In the last five years, they have not only been ingesting the fruit and spreading a large number of ebony seeds all over the island, but it also appears that the process of the seeds passing through their system is helping their germination. Today, the barren heavily logged areas of the island are starting to show signs of life again - with little seedlings sprouting everywhere.

What's encouraging about the results is that similar techniques can be used in other parts of the world to revitalize areas that have been destroyed due to careless human behavior.

Native to the islands of Aldabar Atoll in the Seychelles, the Giant Aldabara are amongst the largest tortoises in the world, growing to lengths of up to 4ft. and weighing as much as 500lbs.

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