Some thoughts from Class 4 - How will life on the tropical island of Aride be different for Sally & Melvyn?

It will be a lot healthier:

• No junk food
• No chocolate or sweets
• Healthy diet, with a lot of fish and fruit to eat
• To be at one with nature and see lots of wildlife
• Live next to the sea and be able to go swimming

It will be more sustainable, but life will be harder:

• No electric – so no television
• No running water and no showers
• Living in a wooden hut with no proper house
• Nature coming into the hut
• Not having normal luxuries, like an English cup of tea
• Have to make camp fires to cook food
• No shops on the island
  

What might the problems be?

• Keeping in touch with family and friends could be difficult
• Big spiders and biting insects
• Poisonous plants
• Hard work
• Have to make your own entertainment, so might get bored
• Catching enough fish and growing enough vegetables to eat
• Getting sun burnt
• Not having fresh, running water
• No normal morning and afternoon routines
• Smelly toilets
  

Would the children swop places – how might they feel?

• Would be sad to leave family, friends and pets, may feel homesick
• Lonely as not many people on the island
• Excited, happy, nervous and worried
• Would enjoy the warm weather
• Would miss chocolate, junk food and television
• Would feel out of touch, without television & news papers

So where is Aride and why is it so special?

The Seychelles’ islands of which there are 115, were created many millennia ago, when India broke away from Africa somewhere close to Madagascar, and drifted across the Indian Ocean, leaving the granite fragments of the Seychelles in its wake.

Aride is the northernmost island of the granitic Seychelles, roughly 68hectares in area, approximately 1.6km long by 0.6km wide. However despite its small size, it is home to one of the most important seabirds populations in the Indian Ocean. It is the finest nature reserve of the granitic Seychelles and a conservationists’ paradise. Eighteen species of native birds (including five only found in Seychelles) breed on Aride, this is far more than on any other granitic island.

The island is leased and managed as a nature reserve by the Island conservation Society (ICS) of Seychelles, but owned by the Royal Society of wildlife Trusts, a UK based charity since 1973. The whole island is been protected by Seychelles law as a nature reserve. Nature is the top priority, and the only human inhabitants are the reserve’s staff, currently four Seychellois rangers and two island wardens.


The Wildlife
Over 1.25 million seabirds regularly breed on Aride, including the world’s largest colony of lesser noddies, the worlds only hilltop colony of sooty terns and the Indian Oceans largest colony of roseate terns. The island hosts the world’s largest colony of Audubon’s shearwaters and what is thought to be the world’s largest colony of white-tailed tropic birds. There are also very large breeding numbers of brown noddies, fairy terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters and a few pairs of red-tailed tropic birds.

There has been several successful translocations of endangered or restricted-range endemic bird species onto Aride, these include the Seychelles warbler, Seychelles fody and the Seychelles magpie robin. The Seychelles blue pigeon and the Seychelles sunbird have re-colonised Aride naturally.

Aride has the world’s highest density of lizards, with other reptiles such as skinks, geckos and harmless snakes. Two species of marine turtles regularly nest on the beaches, the green and hawksbill turtles.

The reserve boundary includes 200m of surrounding seas, including a beautiful coral reef, with over 450 species of fish, from whale sharks to flying fish!!

From Somerset to the Seychelles

Two Somerset conservationists have hatched a plan to ‘twin’ a county school with one in the Seychelles.

After looking after the RSPB’s Ham Wall nature reserve, near Glastonbury, Site Manager Sally Mills and Melvyn Yeandle, who has been the Assistant Site Manager at Natural England's Shapwick Heath reserve, have decided to swap the wetlands of the Avalon Marshes for life in the Indian Ocean and want to share their experiences with schoolchildren in both locations.

Although they are moving thousands of miles, Melvyn & Sally’s new job is also managing a nature reserve but a rather different one from Ham Wall or Shapwick Heath of the Somerset Levels.

Their new home and place of work will be the island nature reserve of Aride, a 70-hectare site and one of the most important islands in the area for wildlife. Only the nature reserve staff live there, a maximum of eight people, but neighbouring Praslin – 30 minutes away by boat – is inhabited and has a population of around 6,500.

Sally said: “We are going to be experiencing a huge change in our lifestyle by moving to the Seychelles and even though we have the tropical weather to look forward to we’ll be facing challenging conditions like having no running water and little electricity.

“As well as managing the nature reserve and dealing with issues such as poaching of birds and their eggs, we’ll be working with local communities to raise awareness of conservation issues and overseeing improvements to facilities on the island.

“We thought it would be both interesting for children in both locations to learn about each others lives and also to find out about nature conservation in different settings and for very different wildlife.”

Sally has worked with Meare Village Primary School on many occasions during her time at Ham Wall and plans to keep in touch with them – and put them in touch with schoolchildren from Praslin – using the internet.

“I’ve already been to talk to the kids about my new job a couple of times to tell them about what We’ll be doing on the Seychelles and topics like needing to grow or catch our own food.

“We’ve also talked about also how they might feel if they were in my shoes, but we didn’t share the same concerns about no television or chocolate! They did identify very closely with our own feelings on the journey ahead though – very excited, a little scared, but about to undertake an opportunity of a lifetime.”