Denis Island makes significant contribution to national tree planting campaign.

At the beginning of the year the Minister for Environment launched the "My Tree Our Seychelles" Campaign, a national tree planting campaign, with the aim of getting the whole country to participate in planting trees to offset carbon emission on our planet.

Denis Island is in the middle of a major broadleaved woodland habitat creation project and submitted the following article to the campaign to publicise its contribution in this regard. The article below was published in the Nation newspaper on Saturday 5th July:

Denis Island Makes Significant Contribution to National Tree Planting Campaign

The national “My Tree Our Seychelles Campaign” launched this year has received considerable attention in the media, but activities are not merely restricted to the main granite islands.

Denis Island, in partnership with Nature Seychelles, has over the last year planted approximately 2000 native broadleaf trees – consisting of 13 species - on the island as part of a habitat creation project. In total some 20 hectares of forest has been managed and re-habilitated to support the conservation of rare endemic bird species and this is just the latest phase of such work.

Denis Island is a large (143 Ha) coral sand cay situated to the north of the Seychelles plateau. The island plays host to a luxury hotel resort and diverse production landscape operations. Island restoration programmes were initiated in 1998 culminating in the removal of cats and rats from the island in 2000 and 2002 respectively. During this period, Denis, in partnership with Nature Seychelles, worked to rehabilitate an initial 35 hectares of broadleaved woodland forest as the first stage of creating suitable habitat for future introduction of endangered endemic bird species. The rare Seychelles Fody/ Tok Tok (Foudia sechellarum) and Seychelles Warbler/Timerl Dezil (Acrocephalus sechellensis ) were successfully introduced in 2004. The current planting programme is extending this broadleaf woodland to create more bird habitat and to allow for further species introductions most imminently that of the Seychelles magpie robin/ Pi Santez (Copsychus sechellarum) later this year.

Work on production landscapes has also involved the planting of fruit trees to help meet the island’s and hotel’s needs with 130 fruit trees of various species having been planted out in an orchard over the last year.

Denis however is also working on other sustainability projects in partnership with the Green Islands Foundations. A five year management plan that strives to put the island on a sustainable footing combining tourism, production landscapes and conservation initiatives has recently been finalised and this foresees considerable further woodland restoration and tree planting as well as other measures to reduce the island’s carbon emissions.