flickering pictures

A tiny island chain, isolated and all but forgotten off the coast of Yemen, is home to one of the most fascinating and unique ecosystems on Earth. It also looks like something Lewis Carroll might have dreamed up after way, way too much absinthe.

I have to go there.

From the New York Times:

Some 250 million years or more ago, when all the planet’s major landmasses were joined and most major life-forms were just a gleam in some evolutionary eye, Socotra already stood as an island apart. Ever since, it has been gathering birds, seeds and insects off the winds and cultivating one of the world’s most unusual collections of organisms. In addition to frankincense, Socotra is home to myrrh trees and several rare birds. Its marine life is a unique hybrid of species from the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. In the 1990s, a team of United Nations biologists conducted a survey of the archipelago’s flora and fauna. They counted nearly 700 endemic species, found nowhere else on earth; only Hawaii and the Galapagos Islands have more impressive numbers.

The plants here look like nothing I’ve ever seen — from the too-symmetrical fairyland Dragon’s Blood trees (above) to the Desert Roses (right) that sprout insanely out of the rocks and crags, looking like disfigured elephant legs topped with delicate pink flowers. The islands have earned well-deserved recognition as a UNESCO world natural heritage site, and development is prohibited on more than 70 per cent of the main island. With only 43,000 Bedouins scattered across the entire archipelago, there aren’t many people around to spoil it either — and it probably doesn’t hurt that they’ve only had paved roads for four years.

Socotra could probably draw masses of curious, wealthy tourists from Europe and the Middle East, but the Yemeni government seems to be making a conscious effort to keep their island treasures under the radar — a rare example of conservation trumping cash. The decision is all the more remarkable given Yemen’s place as one of the Arab world’s poorest nations — oil reserves are nearly gone, there’s very little industrialization, and a civil war destroyed a good chunk of its infrastructure in 1994.

If, like me, you absolutely have to go to this place, read this great three-page travel piece, printed back in 2007 in the New York Times. Toward the end, it includes helpful tips for getting there — which doesn’t seem easy, incidentally.

Thanks, Adeomus!
Top image via the New York Times.
Side image via 17 Things.
Bottom image via e-mail.
(if these are yours, please let me know so I can credit you.)

• plug this post
  
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati