page_title: Geography of Seychelles
section_title: Flora and fauna
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of Seychelles / Flora and fauna
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ein anderer Traumstrand der Anse Source d'Argent auf der Insel La Digue, Seychellen. English: Another spectacular beach of Anse Source d'Argent on the island of La Digue, Seychelles. Español: Una espectacular playa de Anse Source d'Argent en la isla de La Digue, Seychelles. Français&#160;: Une plage magnifique d'Anse Source d'Argent sur l'île de La Digue, dans les Seychelles.
context_page_description: The Seychelles is a small island nation located in the Somali sea northeast of Madagascar and about 835 mi from Mogadishu, Somalia, its nearest foreign mainland city, while Antsiranana is the nearest foreign city overall. Seychelles lies between approximately 4ºS and 10ºS and 46ºE and 54ºE. The nation is an archipelago of 115 tropical islands, some granite and some coral. the majority of which are small and uninhabited. The landmass is only 452 km², but the islands are spread wide over an Exclusive Economic Zone of 1,336,559 km². About 90 percent of the population of 90,000 live on Mahé, 9 percent on Praslin and La Digue. Around a third of the land area is the island of Mahé and a further third the atoll of Aldabra.
  There are two distinct regions, the granitic islands, the world's only oceanic islands of granitic rock and the coralline outer islands. The granite islands are the world’s oldest ocean islands, while the outer islands are mainly very young, though the Aldabra group and St Pierre are unusual, raised coral islands that have emerged and submerged several times during their long history, the most recent submergence dating from about 125,000 years ago
context_section_description: The uniqueness of the Seychelles' ecology is reflected in the US$1.8 million project of the Global Environment Trust Fund of the World Bank (see Glossary) entitled Biodiversity Conservation and Marine Pollution Abatement, that began in 1993. The World Bank study for this project states that the islands contain, out of a total of 1,170 flowering plants, "at least 75 species of flowering plants, 15 of birds, 3 of mammals, 30 of reptiles and amphibians, and several hundred species of snails, insects, spiders and other invertebrates" found nowhere else. The diversity of species in the islands is being assessed by the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles. In addition, the waters contain more than 1000 kinds of fish, of which more than one-third are associated with coral reefs. Specific examples of unique birds are the black paradise flycatcher, the black parrot, the brush warbler, and a flightless rail. Most famous of all the Seychelles animals are the giant tortoises of the genus Aldabrachelys.
caption: White beach on the island La Digue
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