Since the founding of giant tortoise colonies on Cerf Island in the 1790s, the Seychelles has been active in the field of conservation. What started as private nature reserves sometimes became national protected areas under government control, until NGOs were finally permitted in 1992.
First among them was the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles, founder of the Roche Caiman Bird Sanctuary, the Giant Tortoise Conservation Project, Silhouette National Park and more. It has also worked with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Eden Project and the Zoological Society of London.
The Seychelles have been a particular success story when it comes to green sea turtles, which used to be hunted in the archipelago, especially in the isolated Aldabra Atoll. The population of Aldabra’s green turtle, Chelonia mydas, dropped to critically low levels, leading the UK’s eminent Royal Society to recommend that the atoll become a nature reserve with turtle protection in 1968. In 1982 it became a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The recovery has been wildly successful. Aldabra now has the 2nd-largest green-turtle breeding population in the western Indian Ocean and implements a rigorous turtle-track monitoring programme to keep count of nesting/egg-laying. Nests have been found to have increased by 410–665% since 1968, and on that basis the current population could double again as it already has done.