Heralded recently by it's GM as, "As much a conservation project as a five star resort," the newly opened North Island hotel appears to be taking it's environmental responsibilities very seriously.

After being abandoned as a copra plantation in the 1970's, the island has now been given a new lease of life as home to one of the most luxurious hotels in the country, and the investment by the hotel managers, Wilderness Safaris, has gone a long way towards rebuilding the island's natural environment.

North Island's environment manager, John Duncan explained that the hotel has had to address a wide variety of environmental issues in order, not just to safeguard the environment from the impact of the hotel development, but also to actively improve the condition in which the island was leased.

According to Mr Duncan plants and animals on small islands have enabled biologists to understand how physical responses to the environment become genetically encoded, but that this process of unhindered evolution is exceptionally vulnerable to the introduction of alien species.

With this in mind the most notable achievement thus far has been the island's rat eradication programme, which began in December last year, achieving "physical elimination" by this August.

North Island was identified by the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) as a possible target for rat elimination, in 1998. Working alongside local NGO Nature Seychelles, Wilderness Safaris began clearing alien vegetation, a task coupled with the goal of rat eradication.

Using seven tonnes of rat bait, or roughly one pellet per square metre, the poisoning programme was begun. Carried out three times in three weeks, a helicopter was used to cover the island with bait, which, working by thinning the rat's blood, is harmless to non target species.

Before the poisoning took place rat traps on the island were catching between 30 and 50 rats per night. This figure is now down to zero.

Noting the risk of re-introduction, Mr Duncan explained that only the hotel's own small landing vessel could come ashore on the island and all supply boxes were opened in a "rat-proof" room, in case they contained any rodent stowaways.

In addition to eliminating rats and working on clearing the island of invasive plant species, the Wilderness Safaris environmental team also eradicated cats, cows and pigs from the island, creating the necessary platform for the reintroduction of endemic species.

According to Mr Duncan, the most likely candidates for initial bird re-introduction projects would be the hardier species, such as the tok tok or white eye, with more specialised feeders including the paradise fly catcher and magpie robin considered at a later date.

Included in the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles' (MCSS) recently formed turtle monitoring network, the environment team is, however, taking a more passive role in dealing with nesting turtles.

At present none are being tagged, with staff instead making sure that guests do not disturb the animals.

Mr Duncan said that the team hoped to incorporate the hotel's environment programme into the guests' holiday experience.

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