How conservation is reshaping Príncipe, Africa's lush, lost Eden

Dark, dense and enormous, the forest faces down the ocean. Trees stretch out across the water, limbs straining against the surf bursting into lace along the shore — as if intent on marching out across the waves.

Nature is a palpable force on Príncipe, a tiny teardrop of an island lying 200 miles off the West African coast. If Earth had a bellybutton, this would be it, sitting right at the planet’s centre point, where the zero meridian meets the Equator.

Marooned in the Atlantic, Príncipe feels like a lost world, its rainforest heavy with a primeval intensity that calls to mind the Ents of The Lord of the Rings. I half expect the trees to reach out and shake my hand as my speedboat bumps across the waves, my guide Batista pointing gleefully to flying fish launching themselves from the water.

“This is Africa’s Galápagos,” he reveals, swivelling his Balenciaga cap to a jaunty angle and wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. “Per square mile, we have more endemic species here than anywhere else in the world.” Flying fish, I learn, aren’t one of these, yet when the boat slows to a stop in the shadow of the island’s tallest mountain, Príncipe Peak, I dive into the ocean and soon spy a shoal of Tomio’s parrotfish.

So busy am I admiring their delicate spotted backs that, when the sunlight suddenly disappears and I find myself surrounded by a swirling mass of inky darkness, I think I’ve somehow fallen from sea to space and am witnessing a display of shooting stars. The sardine ball shifts and dances, parting to my touch, but closing immediately behind me, locking me in a magical underwater world. By the time I come up for air, the weather has turned. Fast, fat droplets pound the water, thunder rumbles in the distance and mist descends on the jungle, wrapping the spires of the peaks in a ghostly veil.

Designated a biosphere reserve in 2012, the entire island is inscribed by Unesco, while more than half is a national park — an emerald expanse home to creatures found nowhere else on Earth. “Lapa,” Batista gestures to a clutch of wooden dwellings huddled around a small beach, as our speedboat heads home. “Ten families live there and it’s the only village in the park. It’s takes more than four hours to walk here from town, so it’s a bad day when you forget something on your shopping list.”

The forest seems ancient, eternal, and I wonder whether the landscape has changed much during his lifetime. “No, no,” he laughs, “Príncipe doesn’t change.” And the island, it turns out, has one man to thank for that: Mark Shuttleworth, a South African astronaut-turned-conservationist, whose passion was piqued as he gazed down on Earth from space, moved by her beauty, but also her vulnerability.

Mark began buying up swathes of land on Príncipe, protecting it from the fate of its sister island São Tomé, where Chinese conglomerates descended to replace vast areas of ancient forest with one biologically devastating monoculture: palm oil. Through the sustainable development and ecotourism company, Here be Dragons (HBD), his approach has been three-pronged, focusing on conservation, agroforestry and hospitality. The company now employs more than 500 people, a striking figure on an island with a population of fewer than 10,000.

“Everyone knows someone who works for HBD: a friend, an aunt, a cousin,” Batista says, helping me down from the boat, our feet sinking into sand as soft as butter as we splash our way to shore. “We’re lucky — 10 years ago, the economy was struggling. There were no jobs, and my friends were all leaving the island. Now, we all want to stay. And why wouldn’t we? It’s the most beautiful place on Earth.”

Behind thick, indignant clouds stained scarlet and aubergine, the sun is setting, the day slowly draining from this extraordinary landscape. A flock of grey parrots call out their goodnights as they wheel across the sky, mud crabs make their first tentative moves across the sand and I spot the endemic Dohrn’s thrush-babbler posing on a palm frond as I make my way back to my suite at Sundy Praia. The low-key luxury hotel is one of the three Mark owns on the island.

“Nature is the USP here, and it’s crucial people know that,” Emma Tuzinkiewicz tells me the following day. I’ve met HBD’s sustainability director for a lunch of ceviche and lightly spiced octopus fresh from the ocean and hot off the grill. “There’s no industry here, no big companies, no nothing — and, as Mark always says, people are most motivated by love and money. To safeguard the natural world, people need to profit from it.”

Her project, which was pioneered in Costa Rica, pays both travellers and locals to plant trees that add to the island’s biodiversity. Emma also works to ensure that as many guest dollars as possible are ploughed back into education and conservation, while also driving through initiatives to cut waste and recycle; rubbish pick-ups have become a weekly social gathering in Príncipe’s toy-town capital, Santo Antonio. And when I meet my second guide, I see how love also plays a large part in the population’s resolve to protect its greatest asset.

Jackson seems to come alive beneath the canopy. During our drive to the entrance of the Obô Natural Park of Príncipe, he’s quietly contemplative, yet in the shadow of towering kapok trees, with butterflies as small as buttons dancing around his ears, all his shyness evaporates. “Welcome to my happy place,” he grins. “Welcome to the jungle.”

The forest and the future

We take the Oquê Pipi Waterfall Trail. Steam rises from leaves as big as elephant ears, coral trees rain down petals the colour of a freshly stoked fire and birds sing us a morning symphony as Jackson reads me the story written in the jungle.

“This little guy will become one of Príncipe’s most beautiful butterflies, the endemic acraea species,” he says, pointing to a caterpillar that has something of the punk rocker about it, thanks to a bristling mohawk of black hair running the length of its back. “If you happen to pay for something with a 10 dobra note, there will be a picture of this butterfly on it. In fact, all our money has wildlife printed on it.”

It’s a fitting echo of the impassioned speech Emma had given me the day before: that on this tiny island, nature isn’t just captivating — it’s currency. The giant tree frogs belching heartily from their hidden perches in the undergrowth appear on the 20 dobra note, while pretty, pocket-sized shrews grace the fives.

“And beyond wildlife, we have so many endemic plants here, too,” Jackson continues. “This is nature’s pharmacy; we’ve been using the plants found in the jungle as medicines for centuries.” He points out the frilly edges of a mosquito leaf, famed for its insect-repelling properties, and the rare micaco plant, a potent aphrodisiac. There’s bark for toothache, roots to aid the digestive system and the bulging blooms of a giant begonia, whose petals are said to soothe skin conditions.

By the time we reach the waterfall, we’re tired but triumphant. A group of children wade in the shallows of the pool at its base, splashing each other and squealing in innocent delight when a herd of wild pigs hurtles past. Jackson chats away to the youngsters in the local tongue, Príncipense, telling them of an encounter he once had with a lagaia here, a fox-like feline so elusive that locals call it the ghost of the forest.

They’re entranced, drinking in his every word, and I’m struck by children’s universal awe of the natural world. It’s an innate wonder, born into us, but all too often lost in adulthood and it’s something, I discover the following day, that people are working tirelessly to ensure never withers on this island nation.

Emma meets me in Santo Antonio, pulling over in her 4WD and gesturing for me to climb in. The capital thrums with life. Chickens run amok among kids on their way to school and the lilting voices of women outside open-fronted fabric shops carry on the air, humid and already thick with heat.

We weave our way through the crowds, pausing as Emma shouts out greetings to almost everyone we pass while giving me a guided tour. First up is the church, painted in bright periwinkle blue, followed by a restaurant run by local legend Dona Tonia that’s said to serve the best octopus rice on the island. Finally, there’s the island’s only club — a tiny, tumbledown building with ‘Discotheque’ scrawled across its sunshine-yellow exterior.

But we’re not here to pray, eat or party. On the outskirts of the capital, where the wilderness halts its advance, we meet a group of schoolgirls with binoculars around their necks, clutching bird books and looking awkwardly, endearingly eager. Busy setting things up is Martim Melo, a bespectacled, softly spoken scientist taking time out from his doctorate in Portugal to share his passion for birds.

“HBD created this programme partnering with local schools,” Emma whispers as we approach. “The fact it’s only girls has caused a bit of a stir, but while education is pushed for both sexes, girls are still seen as future mothers in Príncipe, not as career women. We want to empower them, perhaps to become scientists, but most of all to love the natural world and to safeguard our paradise island.”

We turn our ears towards the trees and, with the help of Martim, slowly unstitch the soundscape: there’s the metallic, tinny twang of the Príncipe sunbird, the raucous chatter of the golden weaver and the mellifluous cooing of the São Tomé green pigeon. The creatures could make a birdwatcher of the most avian-averse traveller, and I find myself as fascinated as the schoolgirls who make notes, ask questions and diligently direct their binoculars wherever Martim instructs them to.

In fact, I’m so entranced by a Príncipe starling’s shimmering, purple plumage that when one of the group’s youngest participants taps me shyly on the shoulder, it takes me a moment to pull my gaze away. Jani is wide-eyed and beautiful, with a smile that would melt hearts and a bright pink outfit that rivals the island’s most colourful birds. She shows me her notes on the starling, page after page written in immaculate handwriting and explains that she’s going to become an ornithologist.

Her tone is confident, matter of fact and, as she turns to point her binoculars towards a Malachite kingfisher, I notice the slogan on her T-shirt. It reads, ‘We are the future, believe in yourself always’, and in her, I glimpse that future — a vision of Príncipe as a protected Eden; a place where wildlife thrives and nature will always reign supreme.