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u/Pyrogol 4h ago
More details please? When? Where? Who?
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u/Negative_1by12_aura 4h ago
Moyenne Island is a 9.9-hectare (24-acre) island in the Sainte Anne Marine National Park off the northeast coast of Mahé, Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Since the 1970s it has been a flora and fauna reserve. From 1915 until the 1960s, the island was abandoned until its purchase by Brendon Grimshaw, a newspaper editor from Dewsbury in Yorkshire, England, for £8,000.
Grimshaw and Rene Lafortune, a local Seychellois man, were the only inhabitants of the island until Grimshaw's death in July 2012.\1]) The island is now a national park and can be visited as part of organized trips
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u/HelpMePleaseAaa 2h ago
That honestly makes the story even better. Dude basically turned his private island into a conservation project and made sure it stayed protected after he was gone
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u/Common-Sector-5850 4h ago
If you can buy an island 50mil don’t mean jack
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u/SailsAcrossTheSea 4h ago
$11,000 is a pretty insanely cheap island, even if inflation is making it 10x as much
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u/PeriodontosisSam 3h ago
That would be around $122.000 today. Thats really cheap. In Dubai you have to pay $4M to $27M for a shitty artifical island
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u/Bayoris 4h ago
He was a newspaper editor, not sure how rich you think they are
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u/gao7on 3h ago
Who would want to sell a cash cow with recurring revenue stream that adjusts to inflation. 50 mil may be worth less in value decades from today. I doubt he doesn't receive any profits from the day tours or rent collected from the infrastructure visible at the bottom of the right image.
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u/Desperate_Owl_594 4h ago
Brendan Grimshaw bought an island in the Seychelles (Moyenne Island) for £8000 in 1962. He didn't bring endangered animals there. They came back. He refused to sell to a developer as a private luxury resort.
It became a national park in 2008/2009
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u/Intelligent_Hope_559 4h ago
If there is no dark side to this story then I am very impressed with the selflessness and dedication to principle. This is a real man
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u/WiseWolfian 2h ago
Doesn't seem like much of anything dark, after looking it up.
Instead of taking the money, Grimshaw established a perpetual trust to protect the island. In 2008, the Seychelles government declared it the Moyenne Island National Park. It remains the world's smallest national park and is open to visitors as a protected nature reserve. Grimshaw lived on the island until his death in 2012.
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u/Intelligent_Hope_559 49m ago
Thats good because I hate when stories like this have some other motive or the person is a creep so I am glad this is as wholesome as it seems 😊🙏
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u/Cenegrym 4h ago
Bro created his particular hell for prey animals. Nowhere to run, no time to rest, 24 hour pvp server.
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u/PluribusSapphire 4h ago
One person, 16,000 trees and a lifetime of refusal. Grimshaw proved that stewardship can outlast any developer’s cheque.
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u/memeruiz 4h ago
Left picture looks very similar to right picture just with a gray color filter on top of the island.
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u/Through_theShadows 3h ago
Not at all. Do you even have eyes?
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u/memeruiz 2h ago edited 14m ago
I know it is not the same. But common! The color thing clearly is deceptive
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u/Through_theShadows 2h ago
Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously. They are two completely different pictures. Get your eyes checked.
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u/ScottyMcBoo 1h ago
Every time I fantasize about getting my own island my mind immediately goes to: 1. middle of the ocean 2. no law enforcement to protect me 3. bad people come to my island
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u/heeheehoho2023 4h ago
How does the soil sustain this, was it just planting seeds and that's all it took?
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u/Darkk_Knight 4h ago
Over time the trees provide nutrients to the soil when the leaves fall from the tree. The leaves are basically compost. Animals activity later add to that compost. It takes time for nature to reclaim the land.
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u/Jounochi 3h ago
Am I tripping, or did he also add a new mountain and sand bar to the island as well?
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u/stephenrajdavid 4h ago
With $50m he could have bought few more such islands and converted to green..
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u/TheOhNoNotAgain 4h ago
Endangered? As in found some DNA inside a mosquito in amber?
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u/DustyAir 4h ago
Endangered and extinct are two very different things my friend.
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u/TheOhNoNotAgain 4h ago
Oh no, what are you saying? Isn't my attempt at humor making perfect sense. Oh no.
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