Newspaper editor Brendon Grimshaw bought an “abandoned” Seychelle island in the 1960s and spent the rest of his life lovingly creating the habitat that is now Moyenne Island National Park, part of the Ste. Anne Marine National Park.

Together with a Seychellois named Rene Lafortune Grimshaw transformed the island, planting 16,000 trees by hand, including native hard woods such as mahogany.  The trees attracted birds (some 2,000 make the island their home), and Grimshaw himself reintroduced over 100 giant tortoises, native to the Seychelles but almost hunted to extinction in the early 1900s. The labor of love resulted in Moyenne island now holding more than two thirds of all endemic plants to the Seychelles as well as the Seychelles government standing firm against the multiple advances offering millions of dollars to”develop” the island after Grimshaw’s death.

The Seychelle Islands sit alone in the vast Indian Ocean and are the continental fragments of the super-continent that produced the Americas, Africa, Australia, Antartica and India. As if by some ironical metaphor, it is in these unique, Edenesque remnants of what was that we find a microcosm of our own continental problems.  The Seychellois are faced with tough choices concerning development versus conservation, capitalism versus regulation, and a western style of life versus their own. And smack in the middle of all those forces, is Brendon Grimshaw, an 82-year-old man from Dewsbury, England.

A great deal of the credit for the happy ending to this story goes to the award winning film makers of A Wandering Eye Productions who approached the government with their 2007 documentary. The island was put under protected status as a national park in 2008.  Sadly, Mr. Grimshaw died a few months ago, at the age of 87, but not before his life’s work was protected from privatization. Watching the trailer below is highly inspirational.  Click on the image above to view the entire film.