We have to make sure it stays that way.London Doomsters, Blood Island Raiders have been making more than just waves in the UK since 2002 with their excellent self financed ‘For The Sake Of Clarity’ CD and more recently their split 12″ with Among The Missing. "Socotra is the only island in the entire world where no reptile, plant or bird that we know of has gone extinct in the last 100 years. "We have a chance as humans to not mess this one up, otherwise we've learnt nothing from other examples of huge extinctions on islands," Van Damme said. Scientists are also determined Socotra will not just become another case study of loss. She now helps the community enforce a fishing ban and raises funds to enclose trees and to tackle littering. "But I said, 'Enough: I will do it, and people will see the difference.'" "Everyone said someone else would do something," she said.
"I saw how the lagoon was changing," said the 61-year old grandmother, who watched swathes of trees being chopped down, plastic being dumped and fishing nets trawling the water, a critical nursery for young fish. Sadia Eissa Suliman was born and raised at the Detwah lagoon, listed as a wetland of global importance under the Ramsar wetlands convention.īoats at Qalansiyah on the west of Socotra, the second biggest settlement on the Indian Ocean archipelago.Īn endangered Egyptian Vulture perches on the dead branches of a Dragon's Blood Tree.Ī Dragon's Blood Tree provides shade on the Diksam Plateau in the centre of the Yemeni island of Socotra. "It is a start, but much more is needed," he said. Resembling pineapple plants, they are the painstaking result of at least 15 years' growth. "The last monsoon was worse than anyone had experienced."īut with effort, the worst impact can be slowed-and some Socotris are doing what they can to protect their island.Īdnan Ahmed peered over the chest-high stone wall of a community-run dragon's blood tree nursery, a football-pitch sized area enclosed against goat invasions.
BLOOD ISLAND WINDOWS
"Waves in the last storms smashed the windows of our home," the 25-year-old said, describing how his family had sheltered terrified in caves for days. Mounds made by crabs are pictured on the white sands of Detwah Lagoon, on the far west of the Yemeni island of Socotra. It has also been dubbed the "Galapagos of the Indian Ocean".Īhmed said islanders traditionally don't fell dragon's blood trees for firewood, both because they perpetuate regular rainfall and because its blood-red sap is medicinal. Naming it a World Heritage site in 2008, UNESCO described the main island as one of the world's "most biodiversity rich and distinct". Lying in turquoise seas between Arabia and Africa some 350 kilometres (215 miles) south of Yemen's coast, Socotra is home to over 50,000 people and has remained relatively untouched by the bloodletting of the civil war raging on the mainland.
"The trees bring water, so they are so important," said Adnan Ahmed, a mathematics teacher and tour guide whose passion is Socotra's famous flora and fauna.
Forests of these ancient trees are being decimated by increasingly intense storms, while replacement saplings are gobbled by proliferating goat herds, leaving the fragile biological hotspot vulnerable to desertification.
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