The nature reserve of the French Southern Lands

No inhabitants, no trees, no landing zone... but the largest French nature reserve.

Transcript

00:00It's a huge reserve, 670,000 square kilometers, it's bigger than France-Albania.

00:31In this reserve, first of all, you have to go by boat.

00:34You can't go by plane, there's no plane runway.

00:36And what characterizes this reserve is that there are no native populations,

00:40there are no inhabitants on these islands.

00:42These are large islands.

00:43Cardellen has its 350 islands, it's the size of Corsica.

00:46These are super austere landscapes.

00:48There are no trees.

00:49There are only mosses, lichens.

00:51But, and that's what makes these islands so rich,

00:54is that we have the highest bird concentration in the world.

00:58More than 50 million birds come to breed every year on these islands.

01:02Mainly mangroves, albatrosses, and petrels.

01:10I've been working in these austere lands for 10 years,

01:13and I've already seen huge evolutions.

01:15Typically, we've lost 50% of the plusiometry over the last 30 years.

01:21So imagine, you have your apartment plan, you have your lawn,

01:24in the summer, that you forget to water,

01:26you water it once in two, you'll see very quickly that everything will die.

01:29That's what's happening in the austere lands.

01:31The vegetation is in hydric stress, and so it doesn't rain enough.

01:35Today, we already have 1.3 degrees of temperature increase.

01:39These are not projections, this is what's happening today.

01:42Typically, there are scientific studies that have released a very recent publication,

01:47last month, which showed that 90% of the population of Royal Manchuria

01:53which is based on the Crozet archipelago, has disappeared.

02:02The goal is, first, to make a carbon well.

02:05That is, if the ocean is in good health, it will be able, like a forest,

02:10to accumulate carbon dioxide.

02:12And second, it is to show, the scientists have proven,

02:16that when the ecosystem is very well preserved, it will be able to resist better.

02:20So it will still suffer these pollutions, but it will resist.

02:23And so the goal of the natural reserve of the austere lands,

02:26is obviously to protect these islands as much as possible,

02:30to allow this biodiversity, these mangroves, these seals, these orcas, these whales, etc.,

02:35to resist these climate disturbances.

02:38If we give a little push to nature, nature can regain all its freedom and all its rights.