Black River Gorges National Park (Gorges de la Rivière Noire) is the great green lung of Mauritius: some 67.5 km² of native forest, deep gorges, waterfalls and viewpoints that hold almost everything left of the island's original forest. Created in 1994, it protects the last patches of an endemic ecosystem that sugar cane, logging and invasive species wiped out across the rest of the island.
It is also the last refuge of the wildlife that made Mauritius famous for its fragility. Thanks to conservation programmes, species that were on the brink of extinction survive here, such as the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon and the echo parakeet, as well as the huge endemic flying fox, a fruit bat. Walking its trails is a glimpse of the island as it was before the dodo, the bird that went extinct here in the 17th century.
There are two ways to enjoy the park. The easy one: drive to the viewpoints on the rim -the Black River Gorges viewpoint, the most famous, and Alexandra Falls- to take in the sea of forest and the waterfalls without much walking. And the active one: hike some of its more than 50 km of trails, from gentle strolls to a full crossing of the park or the climb up Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire, the highest point in Mauritius (828 m). Entry is free and there are two information centres -Black River and Pétrin- where you can get maps and guides.
Black River Gorges protects the last native forests of Mauritius, an ecosystem that colonisation, sugar cane and invasive species almost completely destroyed from the 17th century onwards, the same period in which the dodo went extinct. Declared a national park in 1994, it is today the stronghold of conservation on the island: the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon and the echo parakeet were saved from extinction here. The full story -from ebony forest to national park- is on the history page.
Read the full history ↓The area around Le Morne mountain, a refuge for runaway slaves and a World Heritage Site, together with the volcanic landscapes of Chamarel and the island's last native forest.
Read the history of The west and south (Chamarel and Le Morne) →They depart from Mahebourg, 27 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
To understand Black River Gorges, you have to picture Mauritius as it was before the first human arrived, barely some four centuries ago. The island, born of volcanic eruptions in the middle of the Indian Ocean, had spent millions of years in complete isolation. With no land predators and no humans, evolution produced a world of its own, and a fragile one: dense forests of ebony and endemic palms, birds that had lost the ability to fly or the instinct to fear, unique reptiles and bats. The symbol of that paradise was the dodo, a flightless bird the size of a turkey that knew nothing of danger.
That forest covered practically the whole island, from the coast to the south-western highlands where the park stretches today. It was a closed ecosystem, the result of millennia of undisturbed evolution, with extraordinarily high numbers of species found nowhere else on the planet. The deep gorges of the Rivière Noire, hard to log and hard to live in, held on to that original forest longer than anywhere else.
What Black River Gorges protects today is, quite literally, the last significant piece of that primeval Mauritius. Just over 2 per cent of the island's native vegetation survives, and much of that remnant is here, on the slopes and plateaus of this park. Walking its trails is like taking a time machine back to the island as it once was.
The arrival of Europeans from the 16th century onwards unleashed a rapid and almost total destruction. The Dutch, who occupied the island in the 17th century and gave it the name Mauritius, logged the ebony forests intensively — ebony being a black and extremely valuable wood — and brought pigs, rats, monkeys and other animals that ravaged the nests and native plants. In that whirlwind, the dodo went extinct before the end of the 17th century, just decades after first contact: it became the world's emblem of human-caused extinction.
The French and then the British completed the transformation. Under the plantation economy, huge areas of forest were cut down and burned to plant sugar cane, coffee and other cash crops, worked by enslaved Africans and Malagasy people and, after abolition in 1835, by indentured labourers brought from India. Invasive species — deer, wild boar, macaques, rats, and foreign plants such as strawberry guava and privet — kept pushing out the endemic flora and fauna, even in areas that were never farmed.
The result was catastrophic for biodiversity. Besides the dodo, Mauritius lost giant tortoises and endemic birds, reptiles and plants. By the mid-20th century, flagship species such as the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon and the echo parakeet were on the very brink of disappearing, reduced to a handful of individuals in the last patches of highland forest. The island that had been an evolutionary sanctuary had become one of the places with the most documented extinctions on the planet.
The story of Black River Gorges is not only one of loss: it is also one of the most remarkable rescue stories in the world. From the 1970s, when the Mauritius kestrel was down to just four birds in the wild — one of the closest any bird on the planet has come to disappearing — local and international biologists launched captive breeding programmes, invasive species control and habitat restoration, many of them driven by the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation and its partners.
The effort paid off almost miraculously. The Mauritius kestrel recovered to number in the hundreds and today flies over the gorges once again; the pink pigeon, which also came within a whisker of extinction, was bred in captivity and reintroduced into the wild; the echo parakeet, once considered the most endangered parrot in the world, made a similar comeback. These cases are cited internationally as proof that extinction is not always the end if action is taken in time.
To protect the setting of these rescues — the native forest that still survived — the Mauritian government created Black River Gorges National Park in 1994, the largest in the country, covering about 67,5 km². The park brought together existing reserves and added areas of upland forest, gorges and river headwaters, under the management of the National Parks and Conservation Service. Trails were laid out, visitor centres were set up at Pétrin and Black River, and the control of invasive species and the replanting of endemic species were stepped up.
Today Black River Gorges plays two roles that reinforce each other. On the one hand, it is the heart of Mauritian conservation: within its boundaries and in associated reserves lives most of the endemic flora and fauna the island managed to save, from the kestrel and the pink pigeon to the ebonies, the native palms and the trochetia, the national flower of Mauritius. It is also home to the Mauritian flying fox, the endemic fruit bat at the centre of heated debates between conservation and agriculture.
On the other hand, it is the main natural area open to the public on an island famous for its beaches. More than 50 kilometres of trails let you explore the forest, look out from the viewpoints over the gorges and Alexandra Falls, and climb the Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire, which at 828 metres is the highest point in the country. Admission is free, partly to bring Mauritians themselves closer to a natural heritage their history almost wiped out.
The park lives with ongoing threats: invasive species keep up the pressure, climate change is altering rainfall, and poorly managed tourism can damage fragile ecosystems. That is why a visit also has an educational side: the information panels and visitor centres explain what was lost, what was saved and what is still being done. Exploring Black River Gorges means enjoying a magnificent landscape while reading in it the warning and the hope that Mauritius offers the rest of the planet: nature we destroy at full speed can, with work and determination, be partly brought back.
