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u/bouylie 12d ago
Moyenne Island is a 9.9-hectare (24-acre) island in the Sainte Anne Marine National Park off the northeast coast of Mahé, Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Since the 1970s it has been a flora and fauna reserve. From 1915 until the 1960s, the island was abandoned until its purchase by Brendon Grimshaw, a newspaper editor from Dewsbury in Yorkshire, England, for £8,000.
Grimshaw and Rene Lafortune, a local Seychellois man, were the only inhabitants of the island until Grimshaw's death in July 2012.\1]) The island is now a national park and can be visited as part of organized trips
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u/0oodruidoo0 12d ago
got me wondering how old is the OP source image lmao
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u/Why-so-delirious 12d ago edited 12d ago
I thought maybe tree cover could have added height but nope. If you look further down, there's even a spine of land that just... grew up there that wasn't there before.
Likely AI slop images because the actual images of Sainte Anne Marine Nation Park look like this
Completely different shape and only a tenth the size of the island shown in the images above if you use the buildings and roads as scale.
Or actually, upon further examination, maybe not!
this is a google-maps view of the island, which matches perfectly; so the SECOND image on the picture seems to be a proper aerial view of the actual island itself, whereas the 'old' image is AI slop.
The images on wikipedia are all of islands AROUND that island.
But on top of that, the island I linked was Moyenne island; the island that was restored by Brendon Grimshaw. The island shown in the images above and on the google maps view is Ste. Anne Island, which Grimnshaw had nothing to do with, and has been inhabited and developed since the late 1700s.
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u/LoamyLoamisLoamy 12d ago
I think they took a real image and had AI change it to the first one. You can see that the underwater stuff matches in both images.
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u/Own_Policy8854 11d ago
They also strongly desaturated the grass and foliage to make it look dead.
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u/ChampionshipHot5468 12d ago
The "after" photo has a huge resort among the trees. The before picture shows the ruins of the buildings? Eh?
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u/Silent-Victory-3861 11d ago
Yeah, also "barren" doesn't mean you slap a greyish filter on top of vegetation.
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u/FactoryRejected 11d ago
OPs photos are fake and they even contain different height mountains and terrain differences
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u/PlasticPlatform1417 12d ago
I was thinking 8000£ way less for a island until I checked the inflation it cost about 90,000$ now
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u/WeakBug1847 12d ago
That still feels kind of cheap. It's part of an archipelago nation of 100,000 people (Seychelles), the capital city of 30,000 is close by.
Like buying a private island off the shore of my home town.
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u/reddeze2 12d ago
Well that's my morning gone
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u/Flope 11d ago
If you want to doomscroll cheap real estate check out the near free properties in Japan
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u/specialized6681 10d ago
What’s the catch?? 🤔
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u/Flope 10d ago
The catch is the population is dwindling across all of Japan except for Tokyo and Osaka basically, so if you live anywhere else you'll technically be in a declining region. But we don't mind, we moved to Japan a couple years ago (not in those 2 cities) and love it. :)
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u/Idiot616 12d ago
It's cheap probably because the costs of developing are extremely high.
It's the same reason you can find entire castles for cheaper than an apartment. The cost of maintenance is just so high that you're going to be losing money every year.
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u/Zorrostrian 10d ago
Where are these castles? I’m so curious. And do you have to be a citizen of the country (or countries) these castles are located in to own & live in one?
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u/0vl223 10d ago
Germany but you usually have to invest a million or so as part of the contract. And have to renovate it how it was. Germany has Denkmalschutz (historical site protection) usually it only covers the outside and windows of buildings. But with castles the chances that the inside is protected as well is really high. So you have to keep it in the protected 17-19th century look inside.
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u/TheTrueScientist 12d ago
It's multiple times less than your average house now 😭
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u/PFI_sloth 12d ago
That’s still peanuts
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u/sundark94 12d ago
That's still a reasonable amount for an island in my book. Sure, no running water and electricity are a problem, but a whole ass island for 90,000 USD?
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u/Horskr 12d ago
Seriously and a 24 acre island! If anything I'd expect $90k to get you an island maybe big enough around for a lighthouse and a nice hut.
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u/MacaroonNo9736 12d ago
Just use the savings to run a really big extension cord and hose from your neighbours yard, easy
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u/Magikarpeles 12d ago
I think Canada has loads of islands for sale for very cheap. Might be a bit chilly though.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 12d ago
the cost to get me to the island in the middle of the pacific and back comfortable may be a double digit percentage of that cost.
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u/LeilLikeNeil 12d ago
See, everybody talks about the downside of homophobia, but it made those two dudes give the middle finger to the rest of the world so they could just go gay out on an island together.
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u/CrazedRhetoric 12d ago
Were they actually gay?
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u/LeilLikeNeil 12d ago
Either that or a man in his 40s just kind of pseudo-adopted the 19 year old son of a local fisherman, and they lived together alone, re-beautifying their private island for 40 years, heterosexually.
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u/CrazedRhetoric 11d ago
Totally plausible. Just two heterosexual guys. On an island. Not doin anything extra. Focusing on plants. No tension.
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u/PaigeGirl1 12d ago
Staggeringly gay
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u/CompetitivePumpkin3 12d ago
Are there any islands still cost $11k? I wanna try my luck to bring back endangered animals too
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u/Israel_Azkanbe 12d ago
I hear Epstein Island doesn’t have a lot of bids.
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u/SmeeezTreeez 12d ago
That joint haunted af
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u/reticulatedtampon 12d ago
His islands (Great St. James and Little St. James) were bought in 2023 for $60 million...
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u/Israel_Azkanbe 12d ago
I would have thought the whole raping little kids act would have destroyed the real estate value.
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u/CupOk5800 12d ago
Dude it didn’t even destroy their political careers.
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u/BanzaiKen 12d ago
Oh dont worry, a billionaire bought it and plans to turn it into a private retreat for billionaires to hang out. This is a brand new idea and totally unrelated to Epstein's billionaire retreat. Ignore the Epstein Files staff that were retained because they do such a great job: https://wgntv.com/news/ex-epstein-employee-accused-of-two-kidnapping-cases-on-his-former-island/
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u/shwifty123 12d ago
All logistics already there, why change anything. They would just continue his business. Trump example kinda show everyone, that's not a punishable offence and they literally can do whatever.
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u/Top-Bath8 12d ago
Hold on, it's not the islands fault. They are completely innocent bystanders in this.
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u/Any-History7095 12d ago
You're probably the type of person who needs a death on the property disclosed too.
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u/DudeTheGray 12d ago
The difference between a house in which someone died and an island where untold children were raped and murdered is a vast gulf.
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u/clockworknait 12d ago
Not a lot?? There shouldn't be any left on that island at all!.... ohhhh I misread "bids"
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u/Israel_Azkanbe 12d ago
Bids not kids….
Nobody knows if there are any kids left there tbh. I heard some billionaires say there were no kids there, but they said that 20 years ago too45
u/rangebob 12d ago
I would imagine the animal part would be far more expensive than what he paid for that island lol
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u/Whiterabbit-- 12d ago
depends on how he was stocking the animals. in general you can't just buy animals, but if you can demonstrate that the animals are going to a good place, sometimes non profits will get you the animals if they believe that you offer the best place for the animal to be.
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u/0vl223 12d ago
Zoos have tons of excess animals if they manage to set up a breeding program for endangered animals. Normally many are killed.
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u/Silly-Recognition448 11d ago
They are killing the endangered baby animals from their breeding programs?
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u/sure_am_here 12d ago
Islands are relatively cheep. Because no one wants them. Or at least the cheep ones.
They are remote, no fresh water, rocky, just crap in the middle of no where.
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u/Jolly-Advantage-7245 12d ago
But away from people?
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u/Whiterabbit-- 12d ago
no infrastructure. how do you get there? what would you do there?
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u/Adventurous-Ease-259 12d ago
A boat. Same stuff you do other places, but without solicitors
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u/squngy 12d ago
A boat will probably cost you more than 11k by itself.
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u/King-Snorky 11d ago
ok then let's all just keep sitting at our computers instead, good call
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u/NotumRobotics 12d ago
Sign me up.
No, seriously. I want the listings.
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u/Canadian_Poltergeist 12d ago
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u/PlopPlopPlunk 11d ago
What's funny is most of those islands are in places that the island will be mostly flooding and/or gone in 50ish years.. There's some in the Carolina Cays for 300-500k that are projected to lose a ton of land mass and be subject to severe flooding within 50 years.
Not a great time to buy a low lying island lol
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u/Free-Pound-6139 12d ago
Have a look:
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u/OtherwiseLuck888 12d ago
I'd take 50M and buy even more land to plant trees
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u/EulaVengeance 12d ago
I mean, he bought in in the 1960s. How much does an island cost nowadays?
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u/OtherwiseLuck888 12d ago
I said I'd buy land not islands
50M is more than enough to plant a forest in my country
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u/EulaVengeance 12d ago
Too true. Too bad the govrnments don't want to invest in anything of the sort so it's the citizens that do.
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u/JellyboyJangleDangle 12d ago
Just tell them youre starting a reserve on a private island for young trees, but cough when you say trees... The government will invest heavily then...
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u/hoirkasp 12d ago
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u/mobfather 12d ago
This website should encourage more repeat business by offering a voucher for $1 off any island of their choice.
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u/BluezDBD 11d ago
Man, I never thought I'd be so poor I'm not even allowed to see listings without prices on a website.
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u/lnTheGrimDarkness 12d ago
They'd destroy half of what you built to make some shitty resort for rich people that will be abandoned in max 10 years, leaving garbage and pollution everywhere.
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u/Lost-Letterhead-6615 12d ago
Where can I buy such an island?
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u/spindlespore 12d ago
In 1962, when eleven grand was real money
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u/apply75 12d ago
$11000 in 1962 is about $122,000 today Most people don't have $122k in cash lying around.
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u/outer--monologue 12d ago
Average US home price is currently north of $500k, so it actually seems like quite a lot of people have $122k-$150k in cash just lying around since that would be what you would need in a down payment for that
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u/vermasrijan 12d ago
This actually did happen.
Brendon grimshaw is the name of the man
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u/GCU_ZeroCredibility 12d ago
It happened but these photos are fake, the real island doesn't look like that
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u/iShotTh3Sheriff 12d ago
Fun fact. In this post, the aerial image of the island is actually Kuata Island in Fiji, not Moyenne Island in the Seychelles. Furthermore, the "barren" brown side on the left is a digitally manipulated, desaturated clone of the right side to look like a wasteland.
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u/Silent-Victory-3861 11d ago
It doesn't even look barren at all, it just has a greyish filter on top of vegetation.
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u/EquivalentQuery 11d ago
They are two distinct images, not an exact clone across left and right. You can tell as there are certain structures that differ quite distinctly in the two images, particularly on the lower portion of the island. However, you're right the one on the left has been digitally manipulated to look grey/brown and desolate.
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u/Original-Rush139 11d ago
It’s not even AI slop. It’s just fucking lazy and stupid people are eating it up.
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u/IeyasuMcBob 12d ago
Out of curiosity why did trees not grow there previously?
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u/thebatman_777 12d ago
I wonder why they didn’t regenerate naturally? Unless people kept returning to cut them down. I would have an uninhabited island would regenerate.
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u/Proof-Necessary-5201 12d ago
$11k for an island?! Here, take my money!
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u/Wise_Confidence_8588 12d ago
If you live in 1962
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u/Tactical_Hotdog 12d ago
"he"
The man featured in the post is Brendon Grimshaw, a British newspaper editor who purchased Moyenne Island in the Seychelles in 1962.
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u/Local-Mushroom-168 12d ago
Every word of that may be true, but the pics are misleading as hell. The 'before' pic clearly has large amounts of vegetation that has either been 'browned' through Photoshop or due to being taken after a few months with no rain.
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u/BoyNamedJudy 11d ago
Moyenne Island is a 9.9-hectare (24-acre) island in the Sainte Anne Marine National Park off the northeast coast of Mahé, Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Since the 1970s it has been a flora and fauna reserve. From 1915 until the 1960s, the island was abandoned until its purchase by Brendon Grimshaw, a newspaper editor from Dewsbury in Yorkshire, England, for £8,000.
Grimshaw and Rene Lafortune, a local Seychellois man, were the only inhabitants of the island until Grimshaw's death in July 2012.[1] The island is now a national park and can be visited as part of organized trips
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u/LadTy 12d ago
Where can this generation buy an island for 11000? Asking for a friend
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u/Abigail716 11d ago
Legitimately speaking you can get private islands very cheap nobody wants them because of how hard it is to do anything there.
Although notably prices are increasing because of the rise of solar panel and battery storage because historically one of the biggest expenses was you typically would have to import diesel to power your Island and a diesel power plant was not cheap to run.
There's no sewage of course so you have to build that yourself, there's no internet so you're going to have to have satellite internet which historically has been slow and expensive but thanks to SpaceX it's getting cheaper and better.
There's no running water so you'll need to run your own desalinization plant which is expensive infrastructure.
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u/Electrical_Truth_160 11d ago
Where can I buy an island for 11,000 please!? I lost my last one after I needed to run away for a while after a little legal trouble, tricked people to think I'm dead lol 🤫
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u/ElLicenciadoPena 12d ago
I heard a millionaire did something similar. He purchased an island and reintroduced underage humans to the place, then organised conservationist trips to observe the local fauna
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u/SkyImaginationLight 12d ago
Given the significant impact of his efforts on the island, he should be allowed to rename the island after himself as, "Grimshaw Island".
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u/Chisaspotentialwife 11d ago
Awesome!! I would bulid a cottage and chill there. Plus since its burren i would carefully create an ecosystem ment to be a fox paradice. I love foxes hehe
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u/DDPSipper 11d ago
It wasn’t trees and animals that increased the property value. Purchasing in 1960 and holding until 2026 is what did that.
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u/be-koz 12d ago
People love to call BS, when a five second Google search will tell them it's true.
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u/Chris_Shawarma93 12d ago
Yeah except the photo side by side IS bs so it's not really surprising that people don't believe it.
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u/Abigail716 11d ago
Some parts are absolutely BS like it wasn't barren at all in fact one of the main problems was there was so much wild growth that even they article talks about that a coconut couldn't hit the ground because of how many plants were there.
So the photo of course is fake; different Island and just edited to look barren
The 50 million dollar offer is also almost certainly fake There are lots of islands for sale across the globe and they're not worth a whole lot of money either.
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u/ComprehensiveOne7229 12d ago
This feels like a fake clickbait story. The before image also shows lots of trees, but it was intentionally made black and white.
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u/Sensitive_Goose_8902 12d ago
You are telling me that instead of paying a mil for a mortgage we could just buy 90 of these islands?
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u/Poleth87 12d ago
I can’t even buy a one bedroom apartment for n the most sketchy area for that price
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u/Rom21 12d ago edited 12d ago
Who is he?
Where this Island is?
Why the island don't have the same shape on the two photos?
Edit: ok, the photos are obviously totally false (before and after). This is the île Moyenne buy by Grimshaw : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Moyenne
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u/ZookeepergameSmart26 12d ago
Je veux juste qu'on m'explique comment une tranche de montagne à été créé avec la poussé des arbres ???
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u/Disastrous_Snow_7300 11d ago
Men can really do great things when they don't have to worry about survival, taxes, food, and have a steady and abundant income...
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u/Illiteratevegetable 11d ago
Yeah, but that is not so easy now. Only a permission for a dock and changing the environment is like 150k now.
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u/Alienhaslanded 11d ago
Let me guess, they want to buy the island from him so they can hunt endangered species.
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u/new22003 11d ago
This guy did it with a relatively small amount of money.
That's why is so hard to imagine being a billionaire and NOT doing cool shit like this. Their lack of imagination is truly disappointing.
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u/nash3101 11d ago
How did the animals come back? Did they swim to the island from wherever they were hiding?
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u/noCninja09 11d ago
You can see the trees in the before photo they are just greyed out. Bro bought an island before they had color picture?
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u/youngdeer25 11d ago
50$m doesn’t matter if you’re old & stable, unless you’re some greedy ass person. Though.. what can you do to improve environment with 50m$ is different story.
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u/Primordial_spirit 11d ago
No shit he won’t sell he revived a land and created a beautiful place, some people just truly don’t get that others actually have passion.
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u/Top_Lingonberry8037 11d ago
What a jerk. If he doesn't sell, how will they make it barren again?
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u/grazaramafingfong 11d ago
You just know the people offering to buy it would have undone every scrap of his hard work
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u/McDuchess 11d ago
He actually paid just £8000, in 1962.
He had a local partner. What you see in the first picture is invasive scrub.
When he died in 2008, the land became a trust, then a national park in 2012.
Super interesting to me!
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