The island’s geographic isolation created a wonderland of biological richness. Now population pressures and political turmoil speed the plunder of its rosewood, minerals, and gems.
Photograph by Pascal Maitre
The young man in the shorts and sleeveless T-shirt stands in his pirogue and pulls it upstream with a long bamboo pole. The Onive River is shallow and moves swiftly against him. Overhead a brooding sky opens up and dispenses barrages of rain, then sunlight, then more rain. The young man, whose name is Remon, is as heedless of the weather as the crocodiles lying prostrate on the shore.
