Professor Carl Jones MBE received the Grand Officer of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean in Mauritius, the country’s second-highest national honour, bestowed on him on the recommendation of Mauritius’s Prime Minister in recognition of more than half a century of work to protect the island’s wildlife.
Jones has been a central figure in those efforts for decades: he joined Durrell in 1985 and is now the scientific director of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, the organisation set up by Gerald Durrell in the 1980s to support wildlife protection in Mauritius. Over that time he has helped save several Mauritian species from extinction, among them the pink pigeon and the Mauritius kestrel.
“When we started work in Mauritius, 50 years ago, so few people there realised how important their wildlife was, so to get an award from the Government of Mauritius is wonderful recognition for our investment in the island over the last half century,” Jones said, framing the honour as an acknowledgment of sustained, long-term effort on the island.
The scale of recovery underlines why the government acted. Jones said he is proud of the species recovery his teams have achieved: “I am really proud of all of the species that we have restored together, including populations of birds, bats and reptiles.” His words point to projects that moved species from the brink back toward viable populations.
Rebecca Brewer, a Durrell colleague, said the nomination itself reflected Jones’s personal commitment: "Carl being nominated for this award is just a huge testament to the dedication and passion he has for protecting and saving some of the most endangered species from extinction." She added: "We are hugely fortunate to have Carl as our chief scientist here at Durrell, he really does embody everything that Durrell stands for." Her praise linked the individual honour to a wider institutional legacy.
Context matters: the award recognises conservation work in Mauritius that spans more than 50 years and explicitly ties that recognition to species recovery, including the pink pigeon and Mauritius kestrel. The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, created in the 1980s by Gerald Durrell to support protection on the island, provided the organisational backbone for many of those recovery efforts, and Jones has been a leading scientist in that network.
Not everything about the timeline sits perfectly on the surface. Jones speaks of work beginning 50 years ago; he joined Durrell in 1985 and the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation dates to the 1980s. That gap underlines a simple truth of conservation on Mauritius: it is the product of many hands over decades, with earlier campaigns and conservationists laying groundwork that later projects—and Jones’s long-running stewardship—built on.
The tension between a long historical effort and the more recent institutional milestones also clarifies why a national honour matters now. The Prime Minister’s recommendation ties state recognition to those cumulative results and signals that the government values the decades-long investment that produced recoveries once thought unlikely.
Jones spoke plainly about what that recognition means to him on a personal level. "When I walk into the forest and I see pink pigeons and Mauritius kestrels, I actually feel quite emotional," he said, invoking the concrete, daily measure of success that a national honour cannot convey: species alive in their native habitat. "Gerald Durrell would have been thrilled as he always had a long-term vision for Mauritius, and I think we have exceeded that, and he would be delighted with all that we have achieved."
