News and Blogs

  1. Latest News
  2. Cousin Island News
  3. Blue Economy Seychelles
  4. Green Health Blog
  • Research: Roaming seabirds need ocean-wide protection, research shows

    Unlike other oceans, which are known to have specific “hotspots” where predators, including seabirds, gather in large numbers to feed, the Indian Ocean lacks such concentrated feeding areas, a recent paper has revealed. This lack of hotspots is particularly concerning given the various threats seabirds face due to human activities.[…]

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  • Saya de Malha leaves for its third dFAD clean-up expedition

    (Seychelles Nation) The Saya de Malha vessel of the Seychelles Coast Guard (SCG) left Port Victoria yesterday afternoon for its third drifting Fishing Aggregate Devices (dFAD) expedition clean-up exercise in Seychelles territorial waters and shores of the outer islands. As customary since the first expedition in October 2022, students from Seychelles[…]

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Coming Soon!

Coral Aquaculture Facility!

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We have started work on the Assisted Recovery of Corals (ARC) facility to revolutionise our coral reef restoration process Learn more

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Implementing the SDGs

At Nature Seychelles we are committed to working with government, development partners and donors in implementing relevant actions, in particular, looking at certain goals where we can build on our existing strengths. Read more

Seychelles Wildlife

Natural environment of the Seychelles

Seychelles is a unique environment, which sustains a very special biodiversity. It is special for a number of different reasons. These are the oldest oceanic islands to be found anywhere...

Bird Watching

Seychelles is a paradise for birdwatchers, you can easily see the unique land birds, the important sea bird colonies, and the host of migrants and vagrants. Some sea bird...

Seychelles Black Parrot

Black Parrot or Kato Nwar in Creolee is brown-grey in colour, not truly black. Many bird experts treat it as a local form of a species found in Madagascar and...

Fairy Tern

The Fairy (or white) Tern is a beautiful bird seen on all islands in Seychelles, even islands like Mahe where they are killed by introduced rats, cats and Barn Owls....

Introduced Land Birds

A little over two hundred years ago, there were no humans living permanently in Seychelles. When settlement occurred, people naturally brought with them the animals and plants they needed to...

Native Birds

Although over 190 different species of bird have been seen on or around the central islands of Seychelles (and the number is increasing all the time), many of these are...

Migrant Shore Birds

Shallow seas and estuaries are very rich in invertebrate life. Many birds feed on the worms, crabs and shellfish in these habitats; often, they have long bills for probing sand...

Seychelles Magpie Robin

The most endangered of the endemic birds, Seychelles Magpie Robin or Pi Santez in Creole, came close to extinction in the late twentieth century; in 1970 there were only about...

Seychelles Blue Pigeon

The Seychelles Blue Pigeon or Pizon Olande in Creole, spends much of its life in the canopy of trees and eats the fruits of figs, bwa dir, ylang ylang and...

Seychelles White-eye

The Seychelles White-eye or Zwazo Linet in Creole, is rare and endemic. They may sometimes be seen in gardens and forest over 300m at La Misere, Cascade and a few...

Seychelles Black Paradise Flycatcher

The Seychelles Black Paradise Flycatcher or the Vev in Creole is endemic to Seychelles, you cannot find this bird anywhere else on earth. Although it was once widespread on...

Seychelles Sunbird

The tiny sunbird or Kolibri in Creole, is one of the few endemic species that has thrived since humans arrived in the Seychelles.

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Achievements

  • Stopped near extinctions of birds +

    Down-listing of the critically endangered Seychelles warbler from Critically Endangered to Near Threatened. Other Seychelles birds have also been saved including the Seychelles Magpie Robin, Seychelles Fody, and the Seychelles
  • Restored whole island ecosystems +

    We transformed Cousin Island from a coconut plantation to a thriving vibrant and diverse island ecosystem. Success achieved on Cousin was replicated on other islands with similar conservation activities.
  • Championed climate change solutions +

    Nature Seychelles has risen to the climate change challenge in our region in creative ways to adapt to the inevitable changing of times.
  • Education and Awareness +

    We have been at the forefront of environmental education, particularly with schools and Wildlife clubs
  • Sustainable Tourism +

    We manage the award-winning eco-tourism programme on Cousin Island started in 1970
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Danger in the bottle

(image source: www.scoopwhoop.com)

Dr Nirmal Jivan Shah, The People Newspaper, 5/7/2009: Just when you thought it was safe to drink bottled water, new research shows that plastic mineral water bottles contaminate drinking water with man made compounds that act like human hormones. The study by German researchers published in the journal Environment Science and Pollution Research provides evidence of estrogen compounds leaching out of the plastic packaging of several commercially available mineral waters into the water.

Twenty brands were examined and the results show that mineral water stored in PET bottles had higher estrogen content than the same water stored in glass bottles. The researchers also raised snails in both plastic and glass bottles. The animals housed in PET bottles had higher reproductive rates than average, and they created more than twice as many embryos as the snails housed in glass bottles. The snails are like a “canary in the coal mine,” and the really scary thing is that they are nowhere as sensitive to these hormones as are human cells.

Bottles made from PET have been considered safer than others made from polyvinyl chloride and polycarbonate (used for sports bottles) which have been shown to release BPA (a disrupter of endocrine function ) when hot water is introduced in them. The researchers conclude that they have identified just the tip of the iceberg in that plastic packaging may be a major source of xenohormone contamination of many other edibles. Xenohormones are man-made substances that have a hormone-like effect.

The conclusion I draw from this study and several others about the dangers of drinking liquids from plastic bottles, is that it’s better to drink what people call “PUC water”. PUC water not only goes through gravel and sand bed filters but is chlorinated to kill microorganisms. Water destined to be bottled is purified using ozone and UV (ultraviolet light). This means that PUC water because it contains chlorine will usually have the same anti-microbial properties at all times, whilst water to be bottled can potentially be contaminated the moment it leaves the filtration process.

Another different property of PUC water is the Ph. This is the measurement of acid and alkaline. Water from our hills is naturally acidic. PUC buffers this water with limestone to achieve a more balanced Ph. This is not done for bottled water. And finally there is the cost. Based on global figures, bottled water costs 240 to 10,000 times that of water straight from the tap. In Seychelles where a liter of bottled water costs on average 7 Rupees up, PUC water costs about 20 cents a liter. Enough said!

 

Partners & Awards

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Our History

Since 1998.

Seychelles Nature, Green HealthClimate Change, Biodiversity Conservation & Sustainability Organisation

@CousinIsland Manager

Facebook: http://goo.gl/Q9lXM

Roche Caiman, Mahe

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Contact Us

Centre for Environment & Education

Roche Caiman,

P.O. Box 1310, Mahe, Seychelles

Tel:+ 248 2519090

Email: nature@seychelles.net