Caribbean Style

It is interesting how on occasions when you set about to do something for all the right reasons it can backfire on you.

For many years I´ve been involved in organisations to try to save our planets most precious species. A year ago I had Rob Stewart, a Director of WildAid, to Necker. WildAid does wonderful work trying to save the few remaining tigers, the sharks, the gorillas and the lemurs and other threatened species. Incidentally, Rob also directed the wonderful film `Sharkwater´ about the plight of the shark due to shark finning for soup. Rob urged me to turn our Foundation´s attention to helping save the lemur by giving them another island other than Madagascar to live and breed on. He told me that "lemurs are some of the most threatened primates on Earth and their future has never been more uncertain. Deforestation, bush meat, political instability and the withdrawal of foreign aid is pushing Madagascar and its wildlife to the brink. Mankind is causing a major extinction, the largest in 65million years, and it´s going to take bold steps like this to protect what´s left. Since most lemurs are vegetarian they shouldn´t pose a significant threat to the local wildlife on Mosquito".

I commissioned an in depth study of Mosquito on its fauna and wildlife. The wildlife had been decimated by rats and there was little left of it except geckos that had survived their onslaught. We set about introducing a program to rid the island of the rats.

Since most lemurs that we were planning to bring to the island are exclusively vegetarian, the sifaka lemur, the black lemur and the red ruffed lemur, our experts were not concerned about the geckos. The ringtailed lemur eats mainly fruit and leaves and might eat the occasional gecko, but I was advised that since geckos are nocturnal and ringtailed lemurs diurnal even with the ringtails it would be unlikely that they would eat any geckos at all. And since they will be fed plenty of food, under the care of a full time professionally trained person, they wouldn´t have the need to forage.

We then brought in lemur experts from Africa to see if Mosquito was a suitable habitat for lemurs. Their conclusions were that the dense and tropical thatch palm canopy on Mosquito was perfect, and that they´d thrive on Mosquito. And since they dislike swimming, there was no danger of them leaving the island for Virgin Gorda.

So armed with this research, we spoke to a number of zoos who breed lemurs and they said they loved the idea and would be happy to supply us (obviously none of the lemurs would come from Madagascar as has been claimed by one enthusiastic aspiring politician. We were about to give the lemur a second island in the world to survive and hopefully thrive, and the children of the British Virgin Islands a special treat.

Then I woke one morning to a press onslaught from a gecko specialist in the Caribbean. "Lemurs are aggressive, omnivorous animals that eat absolutely everything. Introducing them would be an appalling idea. They would probably wipe out the gecko". There would be "grave environmental problems". This expert was certainly a gecko specialist but a lemur specialist he certainly was not. But the damage had been done and further inaccurate stories of disease and destruction became concerning issues for the people of the British Virgin Islands. The only positive that came out of the global press hoorah to follow was that Russell Mittermeier, the world-renowned lemur expert told me that in one week we´d done more to bring attention to the plight of the lemur than he´d been able to do in a lifetime! Maybe a little controversy was worth it.

Anyway since our original purpose is to save endangered species I would hate to be responsible for potentially damaging another species. So in the spirit of compromise and goodwill I will keep the lemurs enclosed whilst we get experts to conduct further surveys on geckos and particularly the tiny dwarf geckos that are found on Virgin Gorda and Mosquito Island. If these studies indicate any real risk to these geckos, we will keep the lemurs enclosed.

We have thoroughly enjoyed giving the children of BVI schools regular tours of Necker Island, and particularly for them to see the 250 strong flock of breeding flamingos, the giant tortoises, the rock iguanas and the other wildlife species that live on Necker. Once our work on Mosquito Island is finished we very much look forward to doing the same there.

- Sir Richard Branson