Island floras are vulnerable: the plants cannot compete with introduced weeds and usually lack thorns and poisons to deter introduced livestock. Few important island floras - and a sixth of world plant diversity occurs on islands - have survived human impact without high extinction rates.

For many years we thought that the flora of Soqotra had suffered the same fate. A 1967 expedition produced a valuable account of the flora but also reported that increased goat-grazing and wood-cutting were putting many endemics on the path to extinction. This was followed by a long period in which political uncertainty prevented travel to Soqotra. Then, in 1985 Dr Quentin Cronk briefly visited Soqotra and found that earlier predictions seemed unfounded. "Having seen the degradation overgrazing can cause", says Cronk, "I was staggered to come across a place which was in all probability substantially the same now as 1000 years ago." This prompted a series of expeditions by Arabian plant specialists at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, in collaboration with Dr Miranda Morris, a Scottish ethnographer and linguist, one of only a handful of westerners to speak Socotri, and with the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI). The visits have confirmed this unique situation without doubt.

Since 1989, botanists have discovered over 30 new endemics, made many new records and traced almost all the plants previously recorded. These include the only Soqotran plant officially listed as extinct by IUCN, the pink-flowered shrub Taverniera sericophylla. Latest records show that the archipelago has 11 endemic genera and one sub-endemic family, Dirachmaceae, represented by the small-leaved tree Dirachma socotrana and a second species described recently from Somalia. It is also home to plants of economic value, such as Soqotran Pomegranate (Punica protopunica), the only wild relative of the edible Pomegranate. Horticulturally important plants include Arabian Violet (Exacum affine) and Begonia socotrana, one of the parents of all hybrid, winter-flowering begonias.

So why did Soqotra's plants survive when the floras of many other islands have been destroyed? Inaccessibility is one factor. There is no port and the weekly flight from Yemen to the sand airstrip outside the capital Hadiboh is often suspended. During the height of the summer monsoon only the military can reach the island safely. Without an influx of visitors and modern technologies the islanders have continued to rely upon their natural resources. Their lifestyle has probably changed little since people first colonized the islands. The island has no proper roads, medical facilities or sewerage, and Hadiboh has electricity for only a few hours a day.

Saving the Survivors

Without modern materials and medicines, wild plant products are crucial to the survival of the Soqotran people. Over the last ten years Miranda Morris has been documenting the sophisticated land management practices and plant uses which have protected the islands' precious resources for so long. Live trees and shrubs are rarely felled, livestock are moved from one area to another to prevent overgrazing, and camels are periodically banned from the hyper-arid west of the island. A network of tribal councils strictly enforce these rules. As Morris explains: "People have a clear understanding of the value of preserving the equilibrium between human and livestock numbers on the one

Nevertheless, the balance between the islanders and their environment is precarious. Famine used to claim many lives during summer drought - imports of milk powder, flour, rice and cooking oil have largely put an end to that - but malnutrition is still widespread. Malaria and tuberculosis are common and the infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. Many Soqotrans have seen the better life their relatives enjoy in the Gulf and want some of the benefits that development would bring. They want improved communications with the mainland, better healthcare and water distribution, and imports of subsidized building material. Most important, they want an all-weather port with freezer facilities so that they can earn a proper living from the rich fish stocks of the waters around the archipelago. But is it possible to meet the needs of the islanders and still conserve Soqotra's unique biodiversity?