Lady Elliot Island, a 45-hectare coral cay at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, was left a wasteland in the 1860s. Miners dug out around 20,000 tonnes of seabird guano for fertiliser and cleared the vegetation to get at it. Goats they left behind ate whatever tried to grow back, and the island stayed barren for more than a century.
ABC News reports on the two families who turned that around. Aviator Don Adams and his wife Moya began flying in saplings in the 1960s, raised in Moya’s backyard nursery in Hervey Bay, at a time when only eight Pisonia trees were left standing. The Gash family, who took on the lease in 2005, have since added more than 20,000 native trees, shrubs and ground covers, and their eco resort now runs almost entirely on solar power.
The birds have noticed. About 100,000 black noddies nest on the island each year, up from a few thousand in the 1960s, alongside rare red-tailed tropicbirds. Revegetation is roughly 70% complete. Seabird researcher Zerra Egerton told the ABC: “we don’t ever want it to go quiet again.”
Source: ABC News