Excerpt from news.mongabay.com
In August 2020, Vikash Tatayah at the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation made a phone call he never expected to make. He had “an unusual request,” he recounts telling friends in the U.K. who owned a private jet: A bunch of geckos needed to be evacuated.
Mauritius had just entered COVID-19 lockdown, its airspace was closed, so it would have to be a special flight. Amid the chaos of the pandemic, the island nation had been hit by one of the worst environmental disasters in its history. On July 25, the MV Wakashio crashed onto coral reefs off Mauritius’ southeastern coast, later spilling around 1,000 metric tons of oil.