Does it actually matter very much to anyone other than a bunch of obsessed naturalists that the eight bottle palm trees on Round Island are the only ones to be found in the wild anywhere in the world?
ÑOr that the Hyophorbe amaricaulis (a palm tree so rare that it doesn't have any name other than its scientific one) standing in the Curepipe Botanic Gardens in Mauritius is the only one of its kind in existence? (The tree was only discovered by chance while the ground on which it stands was being cleared in order to construct the Botanic Gardens. It was about to be cut down.)
Ñ There is no 'tropical island paradise' I know of which remotely matches up to the fantasy ideal that such a phrase is meant to conjure up, or even to what we find described in holiday brochures. It's natural to put this down to the discrepancy we are all used to finding between what advertisers promise and what the real world delivers. It doesn't surprise us much any more.
Ñ So it can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travellers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist.
Ñ The state it's in now is only the result of what we've done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it's a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we've lost. The people who do understand what we've lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left.
Ñ The system of life on this planet is so astoundingly complex that it was a long time before man even realised that it was a system at all and that it wasn't something that was just there.
Ñ To understand how anything very complex works, or even to know that there is something complex at work, man needs to see little tiny bits of it at a time. And this is why small islands have been so important to our understanding of life.
ÑOn the Galapagos islands, for instance, animals and plants which shared the same ancestors began to change and adapt in different ways once they were divided from each other by a few miles of water. The islands neatly separated out the component parts of the process for us, and it was thus that Charles Darwin was able to make the observations which led directly to the idea of Evolution.
Ñ The island of Mauritius gave us an equally important but more sombre idea - Extinction.
The most famous of all the animals on Mauritius is a large, gentle dove. A remarkably large dove, in fact: its weight is closer to that of a large turkey. Its wings long ago gave up the idea of lifting such a plumpy off the ground, and withered away into decorative little stumps.
ÑOnce it gave up flying it could adapt itself very well to the Mauritian seasonal cycle, and stuff itself silly in the late summer and autumn, when fruit is lying rich on the ground, and then live on its fat reserves, gradually losing weight, during the leaner, dry months.
Ñ It didn't need to fly anyway, since there were no predators that wished it any harm and it, in turn, is harmless itself. In fact the whole idea of harm is something it has never learnt to understand, so if you were to see one on the beach it would be quite likely to walk right up to you and take a look, provided it could find a path through the armies of giant tortoises parading round the beach.
ÑThere's never even been any reason for humans to kill it because its meat is tough and bitter.
It has a large, wide, downturned bill of yellow and green, which gives it a slightly glum and melancholic look, small, round eyes like diamonds, and three ridiculously little plumes sticking out of its tail.
ÑOne of the first Englishmen to see this large dove said that 'for shape and rareness it might antagonise the Phoenix of Arabia.'
None of us will ever see this bird, though, because, sadly, the last one was clubbed to death by Dutch colonists in about 1680.
Ñ The giant tortoises were eaten to extinction because the early sailors regarded them much as we regard canned food. They just picked them off the beach and put them on their ships as ballast, and then, if they felt hungry they'd go down to the hold, pull one up, kill it and eat it.
Ñ But the large, gentle dove - the dodo - was just clubbed to death for the sport of it. And that is what Mauritius is most famous for: the extinction of the dodo.
Ñ There had been extinctions before, but this was a particularly remarkable animal, and it only lived in the naturally limited area of the island of Mauritius. There were, very clearly and obviously, no more of them. And since only dodos could make a new dodo, there never would be any more of them ever again. The facts were very clearly and starkly delineated for us by the boundaries of the island.
Ñ Up until that point it hadn't really clicked with man that an animal could just cease to exist. It was as if we hadn't realised that if we kill something, it simply won't be there any more. Ever. As a result of the extinction of the dodo we are sadder and wiser.
ÑWe finally made it Rodrigues, a small island dependency of Mauritius, to look for the world's rarest fruitbat, but first of all we went to look at something that Wendy Strahm was very keen for us to see - so much so that she rearranged her regular Rodrigues-visiting schedule to take us there herself.
Ñ By the side of a hot and dusty road there was a single small bushy tree that looked as if it had been put in a concentration camp.
The plant was a kind of wild coffee called Ramus mania, and it had been believed to be totally extinct.
ÑThen, in 1981, a teacher from Mauritius called Raymond Aquis was teaching at a school in Rodrigues and gave his class pictures of about ten plants that were thought to be extinct on Mauritius.
One of the children put up his hand and said, 'Please, sir, we've got this growing in our back garden.'
Ñ At first it was hard to believe, but they took a branch of it and sent it to Kew where it was identified. It was wild coffee.
The plant was standing by the side of the road, right by the traffic and in considerable danger because any plant in Rodrigues is considered fair game for firewood. So they put a fence round it to stop it being cut down.
Ñ Immediately they did this, however, people started thinking, 'Aha, this is a special plant,' and they climbed over the fence and started to take off little branches and leaves and pieces of bark. Because the tree was obviously special, everybody wanted a piece of it and started to ascribe remarkable properties to it - it would cure hangovers and gonorrhoea.
ÑSince not much goes on in Rodrigues other than home entertainments it quickly became a very sought-after plant, and it was rapidly being killed by having bits cut off it.
Ñ The first fence was soon rendered useless and a barbed wire fence was put around that. Then another barbed wire fence had to be put around the first barbed wire fence, and then a third barbed wire fence had to be put around the second till the whole compound covered a half acre. Then a guard was installed to watch the plant as well.
Ñ With cuttings from this one plant Kew Gardens are currently trying to root and cultivate two new plants, in the hope that it might then be possible to reintroduce them into the wild.
ÑUntil they succeed, this single plant standing within its barbed wire barricades will be the only representative of its species on earth, and it will continue to need protecting from everyone who is prepared to kill it in order to have a small piece. It's easy to think that as a result of the extinction of the dodo we are now sadder and wiser, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that we are merely sadder and better informed.
Ñ At dusk that day we stood by the side of another road, where we had been told we would have a good view, and watched as the world's rarest fruitbats left their roost in the forest and flapped across the darkening sky to make their nightly forage among the fruit trees.
The bats are doing just fine. There are hundreds of them.
I have a terrible feeling that we are in trouble.Ñ
