Nature

Seychelles can convincingly claim to be one of the most environmentally aware countries in the world. An unprecedented 40% of the country's landmass enjoys the protection of National Park status.
The relaxed pace of life on La Digue, dependent on bicycles and ox carts for transport, makes an appreciation of the natural environment a day to day lived experience; not something to be pursued when time allows, but a daily integrated part of peoples’ lives.

The most prominent example of La Digue’s environmental commitment is the Seychelles Paradise Flycatcher, or Vev, the only one of the Seychelles’ seven endemic bird species still listed on the IUCN Red List of critically endangered species and found only on La Digue. The island’s 200 or so Vev are easily spotted in the Vev Reserve, a two minute walk from the La Digue Island Lodge, but the jet-black males and white, black and brown females can be seen flitting between the trees in search of their insect prey all over the island.

One of Seychelles’ other unique species, the Aldabra Giant Tortoise, can also be found on La Digue. These giant lumbering beasts, which can live for centuries, can be spotted across the island, but are most easily found, enjoying the sun and languidly munching the nearest vegetation, in their large pen in the L’Union Estate Plantation.

The majority of La Digue’s small human population live on the island’s low eastern plateau and this concentration of people in one area has left the island’s forested hills largely untouched.
Unlike the larger islands of Mahé and Praslin, La Digue was never used extensively to grow Cinnamon and Albizia trees and much of the island’s forest cover today is still in the pristine condition in which the earliest settlers discovered it.

But to experience some of the most stunning environmental sites Seychelles has to offer, grab a snorkel and mask and plunge into the warm shallow waters around La Digue.
The coral reefs which skirt the island teem with a myriad range of marine life. Fish of every imaginable colour are joined by turtles, dolphins and, at certain times of the year, by the world’s biggest fish, the enormous (and vegetarian!) whale shark.

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