Black River Gorges

Black River Gorges National Park was established in 1994 in south-western Mauritius and protects some 68 km², around 3.5% of the island's surface. It preserves most of the native forest left in the country.

Mauritius is the most cited case of the destruction of an island ecosystem: European colonisation from the seventeenth century onwards razed the forest, introduced rats, monkeys, pigs and invasive plants and caused the extinction of the dodo and of dozens of other species. What remains of the original vegetation is a minimal fraction, and it is in this park.

For that very reason the place is also the setting of three of the most remarkable wildlife recoveries in the history of conservation. The Mauritius kestrel was down to four known birds in 1974, among them a single breeding female, and was regarded as the rarest bird in the world; a captive breeding and release programme took it to several hundred individuals. The pink pigeon fell to about ten birds and the echo parakeet to around twenty, and both recovered by similar methods. The fight against invasive plants and animals, through fenced plots and manual clearing, remains the park's central work.