The Seychelles is a small island archipelago in the south western Indian Ocean with land masses of 455km, spread over 115 islands, a population of 93,000 and an exclusive economic zone of some 1.3 million Km².
Forests are important for the survival of this small island nation. They provide Seychelles with limited timber resources, as well as non-timber forest resources, but more importantly with a number of environmental services including the protection of catchment areas and freshwater systems.
The main threats to forest ecosystems today and the key challenge to their effective conservation and sustainable use is Invasive Alien Species (IAS) and degraded forest land resulting from forest fires. Forest fires have contributed to land erosion and biodiversity loss, especially on Praslin and Curieuse islands, in recent years.
Seychelles has developed a National IAS Strategy and related legal and administrative framework to address IAS issues in an integrated manner in line with best current practice. The project to plant 20,000 trees within the next two years will greatly help Seychelles to restore and rehabilitate most of the degraded forests land area as a result of both (IAS) and forest fires, with the aim of enhancing the biodiversity value of our unique environment for future generation.
Project Partners
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