A few weeks ago I posted an article on the Echo Parakeet of Mauritius, a bright green, long-tailed psitticula that been abundant at the time of European settlement around 1598 and was still common by the mid 1800s. Just over two hundred years later, however, the entire global population was estimated to be no more than twelve individuals surviving in a remnant patch of native upland forest in the south of the island. Hunted, predated on by introduced cats and rats, and deprived of nesting cavities and the fruits it depended on by large-scale deforestation, the Echo Parakeet had been brought right to the brink of extinction.

In the 1970s conservation efforts had been initiated by the Forestry Service & the International Council for Bird Preservation (now BirdLife International), but their attempts at starting a captive breeding programme by taking a total of four wild-bred chicks into captivity failed when all four died fairly soon after capture. Writing about the Echo Parakeet in 1984, Rosemary Low (’Endangered Parrots’, Blandford Press) said that “barring a miracle, it will be the next species to become extinct…” and “…the Echo will be the first parrot to be lost in the era of conservation”.

When Gerald Durrell, author, naturalist, and passionate conservationist, visited Mauritius in the 1980s he became determined that he would help put in place a proper breeding programme that would ensure that the Echo - unlike the Dodo, the Mauritius Grey Parrot, Mauritius Broad-billed Parrot, Mauritius Duck, Red Rail, and a large endemic pigeon that was critical for dispersing many of the seeds the native trees produced - would not disappear.

With funding from what was then known as the Jersey Zoo (now the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust) a committed team of researchers led by Dr Carl Jones MBE, a Durrell scientist, and working with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) and the Mauritius Conservation Unit, again began the process of hauling the Echo back. With just a handful of breeding pairs to work with and little knowledge of the Echos’ biology, the pressure in those early days to not make another mistake, not take the wrong decision, must have been incredibly intense: the team began the process of locating the surviving birds, surveying the forest, developing nest-boxes, assessing the impact of non-native predatory mammals, and constructing aviaries from where one of the world’s rarest birds could be raised and released back into the wild.

In 1994 the forest the tiny patch of forest the Echos had survived in was formally protected as part of the 6800 hectare Black River Gorges National Park, and working out of an expanding chain of field stations funded by the National Parks and Conservation Services (Government of Mauritius) the efforts of the Echo Recovery Programme team saw positive results as the number of Echo Parakeets began to climb. As of today the wild population of Echo Parakeets is still restricted to an area of less than 40 sq km but their numbers are now estimated to be around 350+, and the species has been downgraded by the IUCN from Critically Endangered to Endangered in 2007. The species is by no means entirely safe, and it will never again be common (there isn’t the habitat for that to happen), but barring a catastrophe it should now survive…

When I wrote my earlier post I drew heavily on the 2008 Echo Parakeet Management Report which I had been very kindly sent by Anna Reuleaux, who leads the team of researchers in the field in Mauritius. Co-incidentally just a few days after I had first been put in contact with Anna by Lone Raffray, chief fundraiser for the MWF, I found that I had been rostered my second ever trip to Mauritius. I emailed Lone and asked if there was any chance that I could meet up with someone from the team while I was there and learn more about their work. Sure, she said, I’ll sort out the logistics, pick you up at Grand Bassin, and take you to one of the field-stations myself…

From left: Anna Reuleaux, Lone Raffray, Dennis Hansen

Which is how, at midday on Saturday morning (Jan 31st), just two hours after the flight from London landed, I found myself drinking tea on a wooden verandah with Lone, Anna, and biologist Dennis Hansen in a clearing in the heart of the Black River Gorges National Park, surrounded by wild Echo Parakeets and Pink Pigeons (another once-common Mascarene endemic that by the early 1980’s had declined to a single population of just twenty birds discovered near Bassin Blanc in a grove of introduced Japanese Red Cedar Cryptomeria japonica).

I’m struggling as I write this late on Sunday night to properly put into words how it felt to be there: exciting, thrilling, overwhelming…nothing quite describes what it felt like to be watching wild Echos flying into tree tops against gathering grey clouds building up over a remote island in the Indian Ocean, hearing them giving their “eck-ek-eck” calls, seeing them behaving much as they must have done when the first Europeans arrived and began cutting into the forest. Trying to physically draw in and hold onto this new experience, trying to remember every emotion, every sound, every play of light through the trees, I was intently aware that I’d been taken into an area that usually only scientists and researchers were able to visit, and one that I may never visit again. I wanted to absorb it so it could never leave me.

Thirty years ago this flock of Echo parakeets would have represented the entire world population - now flocks of up to 120 gather in the trees around the field-station at dawn.

An adult Pink Pigeon in a native tree on the edge of the field-station clearing

I wanted to explain to Lone, Anna, and Dennis as well how much I appreciated this moment they were giving me, how privileged I felt to have been granted permission to visit the normally off-limits field-station, to be talking with people I barely knew but already admired, but it was difficult again to find the words. I wanted them to know that I understood that without them, without the people who’d worked in this field-station before them, there would be no ‘moment’, that there would be no Echos, no forest reserve, no conservation success. I tried and I hope I was successful, but I’m not sure: I remember I was smiling too much to speak properly..

Of course, not everything about the situation was natural as the photos I’ve used in this post show. We were sitting in a timber building, the field station, that wouldn’t have been here just thirty years ago. In the foreground were a double row of hoppers filled with supplemental feed that the Echos were dropping down onto and pushing up plastic lids to get at vitamin-enriched pellets. Behind them were the old chicken-wired release-aviaries, used now to just hold birds for blood-testing rather than nesting (virtually all the Echos use nest-boxes in the forest). To the left of where I stood disinfected white protective clothing swung gently from a washing-line strung up between three trees. There were two tents set up on one edge of the clearing, and a makeshift chemical toilet built in the forest behind me (raised up off the ground and almost hidden from view this is perhaps the only toilet in the world where you can watch Pink Pigeons fluttering through the trees as you ‘meditate’). Under a huge low canvas canopy to the right was the cooking area and a clutch of seats known affectionately as “Cafe del Camp”. And feeding with the Echos and Pink Pigeons were non-native House Sparrows, Common Waxbills, Red Turtle-doves, and Red-whiskered Bulbuls.

An immature Pink Pigeon photographed through the toilet ‘window’

None of that seemed to detract from the experience of ‘being here’ though. What buildings there are are weathered and sit comfortably in the forest. They seem to exude goodwill somehow. If buildings can be benign, then these are kindly and protective. Without the hoppers the Echos could not survive in such numbers as there isn’t enough natural food left for them. The aviaries looked to be slowly disintegrating away: they seemed to me almost like proud but elderly grandparents, happy to sit quietly while the children they raised play around their feet, their job done. The whole site has such an air of purpose, of dedication and commitment, that it seems to be almost transient, its impact so less harmful than what might have been there instead. This is where a species was saved from extinction, and it seems to know that…

When I’d first arrived I’d asked Lone if there was anything I shouldn’t photograph, unsure what the protocol was in such a hugely important place. She’d assured me that there were ‘no secrets here’ and I could take photos of anything I wanted to. In fact everything about the field-station was far more relaxed than I’d imagined beforehand, and it was surprising how quickly I felt a part of it. Some of that was probably down to sensory overload and jet-lag, but much of it was to do with how incredibly friendly and welcoming Lone, Anna, and Dennis are.

I’ve been in situations in the UK where strutting local-patch birders with just a fraction of the investment in a site as these three have behaved as if they can barely tolerate the presence of another (undoubtedly inferior) human being in their personal fiefdom. Here though, Anna, head of the recovery programme and charged with a quiet, luminous determination, Dennis, a tall Dane with a wicked sense of humour and almost encyclopeadic knowledge of Mauritian bio-diversity; and Lone (pronounced ‘Lorn-uh’), a fellow Dane who vibrates with wonder and energy, were so relaxed with me that I kept wondering if they thought I was someone else, someone far more important, rather than just a bloke who - while he undoubtedly cared about their work and their birds and would do his best to spread some awareness of it - would be ‘here today, gone tomorrow’, still smiling foolishly.

From top: Anna Reuleaux, Dennis Hansen, Lone Raffray

So I wandered around happily photographing Echo Parakeets and Pink Pigeons - once two of the world’s rarest birds - while the three colleagues chatted amiably about the recovery programme, politics, and people whose names I didn’t know like friends all over the world tend to do when they get together…

It was all quite surreal really, but utterly unforgettable. And amazingly things got even better when Dennis picked up his camera and asked if I’d like to go for a walk in the forest with them. If I wanted to I could visit a fenced Conservation Management Area (a CMA) where as much of the invasive, non-native vegetation had been removed and the forest restored to pretty much its original state?

Would I? Oh, I think so, and what it felt like to walk amongst trees that saw Dodos will be the second part of this blog…[which is now online at It's all about the Echos...part two]