The man who bought an island and turned it into the world’s smallest National Park

It is a small island of 9.9 hectares in the Seychelles. Yes, it is small but hides a very interesting story: the story of Brendon Grimshaw, the man who quit his job and bought an island.

For £8,000 (R186,000) – Englishman from Yorkshire, Brendon Grimshaw bought a tiny uninhabited island in the Seychelles named Moyenne in 1962. When Brandon was under forty, he quit his job as a newspaper editor and started a new life on the island.

When he bought it, no human had set foot on the island for 50 years. He found a companion among the locals, a man named René Lafortin. Together, they began to transform the island. Together with Rene, Brendon began to equip his new home. While René came to the island only occasionally, Brendon lived on it for decades, never leaving.

For 39-years, Grimshaw and Lafortin planted 16,000 trees with their own hands together with palm trees, mago and paw-paw trees. They also built almost 5 kilometers of paths, and saved rainwater from irrigating the island. They also installed electricity and a phone line. In 2007, Rene Lafortin sadly passed away, and Brendon was left all alone on the island.

In those long years, the nature lover also attracted about 2,000 new bird species to the island and introduced more than a hundred giant tortoises, which in the rest of the world (including the Seychelles) were already on the verge of extinction. Thanks to Grimshaw’s efforts, the once deserted island now hosts two-thirds of the Seychelles’ fauna. An abandoned piece of land has turned into a real paradise.

Years ago, the prince of Saudi Arabia offered Brendon Grimshaw $50 million (R907 million) for the island, but his offer was refused. “I don’t want the island to become a favorite vacation spot for the rich. Better let it be a national park that everyone can enjoy.” Finally, in June 2008, after years of struggle to protect his island from privatization, Grimshaw’s Moyenne Island was declared a National Park in Seychelles. Brendon sadly passed away in 2012 at the young age of 87.