Behold, the Mauritian Tambalacoque tree.
- They're HUGE (this is a single tree pictured, not a grove!)
- They're old (the youngest is well over 4 centuries old)
- They're unlike any other tree; their wood renowned for its hardness.
And sadly, they're going extinct.
There's only 13 of them left in the entire world, and there's nothing we can do to save them.
Why? .....because these trees are only found on the island of Mauritius, the former home of the Dodo bird. Its seeds, a food staple for the Dodo, only germinated and grew after being swallowed and passed by that specific bird.
Dodos were wiped out via human destruction by 1662. Without the birds, the trees cannot reproduce; thus they've been slowly dying for the past 350+ years, with only the youngest dozen remaining. Unfortunately, thousands of them were cut down and sent to lumber, before anyone realized that they weren't reproducting.
What have we learned in all of this, on this Earth Day 2018?