Mascarene Islands in the context of "Rodrigues"

Réunion (/riːˈjuːnjən/; French: [la ʁe.ynjɔ̃] ; Reunionese Creole: La Rényon; known as Île Bourbon before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately 679 kilometres (367 nautical miles) east of the island of Madagascar and 175 kilometres (94 nmi) southwest of the island of Mauritius. As of January 2025, it had a population of 896,175. Its capital and largest city is Saint-Denis.

Before the arrival of French colonial subjects and immigrants in the 17th century, Réunion was an uninhabited island. Its tropical climate led to the development of a plantation economy focused primarily on sugar; slaves from East Africa were imported as fieldworkers, followed by Malays, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indians as indentured laborers. Today, the greatest proportion of the population is of mixed descent, while the predominant language is Réunion Creole, though French remains the sole official language.

This is a list of Madagascar and Indian Ocean Island animals extinct in the Holocene that covers extinctions from the Holocene epoch, a geologic epoch that began about 11,650 years before present (about 9700 BCE) and continues to the present day.

The Republic of Madagascar is a large island country in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Other Indian Ocean islands near Madagascar include the Mascarene Islands (split between the Republic of Mauritius and the French department of Réunion), the Republic of Seychelles, and the Comoro Islands (split between the Union of Comoros and the French department of Mayotte).

Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about 2,000 kilometres (1,100 nautical miles) off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Agaléga, St. Brandon (Cargados Carajos shoals) and the Chagos Archipelagos. The islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, along with nearby Réunion (a French overseas department), are part of the Mascarene Islands. The main island of Mauritius, where the population is concentrated, hosts the capital and largest city, Port Louis. The country spans 2,040 square kilometres (790 sq mi) and has an exclusive economic zone covering approximately 2,000,000 square kilometres (580,000 square nautical miles).

The 1502 Portuguese Cantino planisphere has led some historians to speculate that Arab sailors were the first to discover the uninhabited island around 975, naming it Dina Arobi. Called Ilha do Cirne or Ilha do Cerne on early Portuguese maps, the island was visited by Portuguese sailors in 1507. A Dutch fleet, under the command of Admiral Van Warwyck, landed at what is now the Grand Port District and took possession of the island in 1598, renaming it after Maurice, Prince of Orange. Short-lived Dutch attempts at permanent settlement took place over a century aimed at exploiting the local ebony forests, establishing sugar and arrack production using cane plant cuttings from Java together with over three hundred Malagasy slaves, all in vain. When French colonisation began in 1715, the island was renamed "Isle de France". In 1810, the United Kingdom seized the island and under the Treaty of Paris, France ceded Mauritius and its dependencies to the United Kingdom. The British colony of Mauritius now included Rodrigues, Agaléga, St. Brandon, the Chagos Archipelago, and, until 1906, the Seychelles. Mauritius and France dispute sovereignty over the island of Tromelin, the treaty failing to mention it specifically. Mauritius became the British Empire's main sugar-producing colony and remained a primarily sugar-dominated plantation-based colony until independence, in 1968. In 1992, the country abolished the monarchy, replacing it with the president.

Réunion (/riːˈjuːnjən/; French: [la ʁe.ynjɔ̃] ; Reunionese Creole: La Rényon; known as Île Bourbon before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately 679 kilometres (367 nautical miles) east of the island of Madagascar and 175 kilometres (94 nmi) southwest of the island of Mauritius. As of January 2025, it had a population of 896,175. Its capital and largest city is Saint-Denis.

Before the arrival of French colonial subjects and immigrants in the 17th century, Réunion was an uninhabited island. Its tropical climate led to the development of a plantation economy focused primarily on sugar; enslaved people from East Africa were imported as fieldworkers, followed by Malays, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indians as indentured laborers. Today, the greatest proportion of the population is of mixed descent, while the predominant language is Réunion Creole, though French remains the sole official language.

The Raphina are a clade of extinct flightless birds formerly called didines or didine birds. They inhabited the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, but became extinct through hunting by humans and predation by introduced non-native mammals following human colonisation in the 17th century. Historically, many different groups have been named for both the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire, not all grouping them together. Most recently, it is considered that the two birds can be classified in Columbidae, often under the subfamily Raphinae. The first person to suggest a close affinity to the doves was Johannes Theodor Reinhardt, whose opinions were then supported by Hugh Edwin Strickland and Alexander Gordon Melville.

Recent extractions of DNA from the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire, as well as 37 species of doves, has found where in Columbidae the raphines should be placed. Raphines are not the most primitive columbid, instead they are grouped with the Nicobar pigeon as their closest relative, with other closely related birds being the crowned pigeons and tooth-billed pigeon. A third raphine, Raphus solitarius, is now considered to be an ibis in the genus Threskiornis.

Pandanus utilis, commonly known as common screwpine or pimento thatch, is a species of monocot in the genus Pandanus, native to the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, and Réunion, and naturalised in Madagascar (where it has often been thought native), the Seychelles, and elsewhere.