This photo, provided by the French Interior Ministry, shows the devastation of Mayotte's rainforests on December 17, 2024.
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Mayotte faces environment, biodiversity crisis after cyclone
by Joris FIORITI
Mayotte has changed beyond recognition since a cyclone devastated the Indian Ocean territory, triggering an environmental and biodiversity crisis that could last a decade or more, according to scientists.
After hitting the archipelago at 200 kilometers per hour (125 mph), Cyclone Chido left behind scenes of desolation: trees felled as far as the eye can see, sturdy tree trunks shattered as if mortars had hit them, the previous green of the foliage replaced by a sad brown.
“It's an environmental disaster,” said Raima Fadul, a biologist. “There are no more trees. The ones that are still standing have lost their tops... The cyclone has flattened the vegetation.”
A gigantic 300-year-old baobab tree collapsed on a restaurant. Part of the mangrove is now completely bare and black. A three-meter mound of earth stands where a half-century-old acacia tree was uprooted by the violent storm.
One of the effects of the sudden disappearance of the vegetation is that Mayotte's slums, once hidden by lush vegetation, are now very apparent, making their number and expansion visible.
'We never noticed'
“All we saw before were mango trees, coconut palms, and a forest,” said Rouchdat Mourchidi, an education advisor who is checking what remains of a family plot on the heights of the island. “We never realized there were metal shacks there because they were hidden in the vegetation.”
Trees have always played the crucial role of channeling rain and slowing down possible flooding. Now that they have disappeared, torrential rain will wash the soil into the lagoon below, covering the seabed with mud.
As a result, part of the lagoon's coral reef will be destroyed, said Fadul, leading to the loss of some of the 300 species of fish, coral, vertebrates, and mollusks present in the reef's ecosystem.
On land, wildlife is already suffering from the loss of forest cover. Small dark lemurs called makis are increasingly being seen in urban areas, where they come in search of food and where they are likely to die.
Bats, pollinators with an important role to play in future reforestation, are also becoming rarer after losing their nesting sites in trees.
There are also serious concerns about the lizards, insects, and flowering plants that used to proliferate in Mayotte.
10 years from now
One ray of hope is that Mayotte's tropical climate will help accelerate future tree growth, said Benoit Loussier, regional director of the National Forestry Office.
“Within 10 years, the plantations could have restored a forest cover” of eight meters (26 feet) in height, he said.
But this can only happen if the population resists the obvious temptation to convert the destroyed forest zones into agricultural land.
This illegal activity was already in evidence before the cyclone, mainly due to desperately poor illegal immigrants practicing subsistence farming.
In 2020, the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimated that 6.7% of Mayotte's forests had been cleared between 2011 and 2016, a proportion of deforestation comparable to that observed in Argentina or Indonesia.
The risk of illicit replanting is all the more serious because the plantations were also destroyed by Cyclone Chido.
Another imminent risk is the “illegal subsistence hunting” of turtles, warned Lamya Essemlali from Sea Shepherd, a wildlife conservation NGO, as Mayotte's poorest go hungry while food aid is still slow to arrive.
Officially, Mayotte has 320,000 inhabitants - with unregistered undocumented migrants probably adding another 100,000 - spread over a territory of 374 square kilometers (144 square miles), resulting in a population density eight times that of mainland France.
The average income in Mayotte is 260 euros (271 dollars) per month, according to the National Statistics Institute Insee, six times lower than in mainland France.
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