Mauritius has always fascinated me. It's such a beautiful isolated island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and the fact that it wasn't populated by humans until the 1600s means that the wildlife evolved with few predators. But that isolation also makes the wildlife very vulnerable and Mauritius is synonymous with extinction - as in dead as a Dodo! A few years ago I visited Mauritius to do some research for my books on French exploration - the island was occupied by the French as Ile de France for many years and was an important gateway to India and Australia. I was saddened by how little native forest was left, but very heartened by the amazing conservation efforts there which, in the last couple of decades, have brought several species back from the very brink of extinction. If you'd like to read more, I've posted a link to an essay I recently published in Zoomorphic magazine on the subject. http://zoomorphic.net/2017/03/mauriti...