Off the coast of Mauritius, this NGO is fighting to protect a nature reserve in the aftermath of the MV Wakashio oil spill.
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00:30We think that the oil products that have been dumped into the sea have reached the
00:44secret island and that it will enter the ecosystem, basically affecting insects and invertebrates.
00:52It will affect our birds, our reptiles, it could even affect our plants that will accumulate these harmful products.
01:23As soon as the oil was dumped into the sea, we took immediate action.
01:29First of all, to remove the plants and the oil plants that were in the way of disappearance,
01:35which are in the way of disappearance and which were in our nursery.
01:39And over the next few days, we were going to remove almost 4,000 plants.
01:52The rope that I hold in my hand is the vacua, and it is a species in critical danger.
02:05We are talking about more than 700-800 individuals that had to be moved, and these are wild animals.
02:33Putting all these wild animals in captivity, or even releasing them in an environment that is foreign to them,
02:41would be taking more risks than leaving them on the secret island.
02:46We have removed species that are in critical danger of disappearance to save a small relic of what these animals represent in terms of genetics.
03:03We also had to rescue 12 bird-of-prey, the most endangered bird in Mauritius.
03:26We also had to rescue 6 cardinals of Mauritius.
03:38We have made a lot of progress in the conservation and restoration of secret islands and species that we have reintroduced or preserved on the island.
03:48But with Wakashio, we have taken a few steps backwards.
03:51What we have to do now is continue to consolidate the ecosystem, the species, and think about the depollution of secret islands,
04:01beyond what we were doing before, which was the restoration of the ecosystem.
04:05You should know that during the last 10 years, we have had 6 boats that have failed in our waters.
04:12The difference is that Wakashio was the first to have a significant oil spill.
04:18There is concern that we will have more failures and more oil spills, but this is where we should be more prepared.
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