There has long been a lobby against returning the Chagos Islands to Mauritius based on tenuous environmental arguments, and Clive Hambler’s letter (28 January) is an example. While the marine ecosystems of the Chagos are relatively pristine, the terrestrial environments are not, as the islands were used as major coconut plantations for a couple of centuries before being forcibly depopulated in the 1970s.
Aside from Diego Garcia, they have been effectively rewilded through neglect, so the vegetation is secondary forest, good but not “virgin”, and does support important seabird colonies. As for the marine environment, the now-displaced islanders fished the waters during those 200 years, also exporting some fish to Mauritius.
