The natural heritage of Seychelles

Seychelles is one of the few countries whose greatest treasures are not built but grown and hatched. Two places carry the highest recognition the world can give a landscape, and both are natural: a coral atoll at the far southern edge of the country, and a palm forest in the middle of it.

Aldabra Atoll

Aldabra lies more than a thousand kilometres southwest of Mahé, so remote that it was spared the settlement, clearing and introduced animals that reshaped the granitic islands. It is one of the largest raised coral atolls in the world, four islands of coral limestone around a vast shallow lagoon that fills and empties with the tide, and in 1982 it became the first atoll ever placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Its fame is its tortoises. Aldabra carries the largest population of giant tortoise on Earth, on the order of 150,000 Aldabrachelys gigantea, so many that they act as the ecosystem's engineers, grazing the vegetation into shapes found nowhere else. Around them live nesting green turtles in numbers rare in the Indian Ocean, one of the world's great breeding colonies of frigatebirds, and the white-throated rail, the last flightless bird left in the region. Because it is so fragile, human presence is limited to a small research station, and any visit or study needs a permit from the Seychelles Islands Foundation.

The Vallée de Mai

On Praslin, the second island, a valley holds a forest that has changed little since the islands broke from the ancient supercontinent. The Vallée de Mai was inscribed in 1983, and its glory is the coco de mer, Lodoicea maldivica, the palm that bears the largest and heaviest seed in the plant kingdom. For centuries the huge double nut washed up on distant shores and was thought to grow on the sea floor, a mystery that gave it its name. The palm grows wild only here and on nearby Curieuse, and the effort to protect it was among the very first conservation acts in Seychelles, back in the mid-nineteenth century.

Who keeps them

Both World Heritage Sites are held and managed by the Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF), a public trust established in 1979 with the President of Seychelles as its patron. SIF runs the Aldabra research station, monitors the reefs through the ocean's warming and bleaching, and manages visits to the Vallée de Mai. Researchers and visitors reach these places through SIF, which is also the door described on our research page.