🐐 Animal invasion

In the late 1700s, many years before he would have a famous comet named after him, the young English astronomer Edmond Halley voyaged through the South Atlantic Ocean, building an observatory on the island of Saint Helena, situated between Africa and South America. From there, he produced the first telescopic catalog of the stars in the Southern Hemisphere’s sky.

On that same trip, however, Halley visited the island of Trindade, some 1,100 kilometers off the coast of the southeastern Brazilian state of Espírito Santo. Presumably thinking he was doing a good deed, Halley released small numbers of goats, domesticated pigs and guinea fowl on the tree-covered island, so that any shipwrecked castaways that may some day end up there would have something to hunt and eat.

Fast-forward almost 300 years, and the Brazilian island of Trindade was overrun with the voracious descendants of Halley’s goats. The once lush and green landscape had turned to rock and sand, with the island’s forest cover reduced to 5%, down from researchers’ historical estimates of 85%…

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