Spanning just one square kilometer, Tromelin Island is now home to thousands of breeding pairs of seven seabird species such as the masked and red-footed boobies.

Credits: Getty Images; Author: Patrick Hertzog;

By 2023, these two species had doubled in number from the precarious, rat-oppressed lows of just a handful in 2004. In the subsequent nine years, white terns, brown noddies, sooty terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters, and lesser noddies all came back on their own initiative.