Since restoration on Nonsuch island began on in 1962, almost 10,000 endemic and native plants have been embedded in its 15.5 acres and rare animal treasures like the Bermuda skinks and longtails are now booming in number.

The living museum has already achieved 90 percent of its goal of turning history back four centuries, according to Conservation Officer Jeremy Madeiros.

But there is still much work to be done, The Royal Gazette was told.

As the island's current caretaker, Mr. Madeiros continues the legendary efforts of one of its founding father, Dr. David Wingate.

His tasks are no less daunting, but a deep commitment to the project leaves Mr. Madeiros willing to face threatening high swells to travel to and from his island home, absail down cliff-faces to check on native birds and remove non-native plants, and even, spend hours on hands and knees in the dark seeking out an interloping treefrog for eviction.

Over the next few years, Mr. Madeiros intends to remove all remaining Cassurina trees from Nonsuch.

The often-despised, imported tree has served a purpose on the reserve, however, protecting fledging endemics from winds and storm activity until they could become effectively settled in their new home.

But with most endemics and native plants now happily thriving - from the canopied forest down to the path moss - the Cassurinas will be slowly uprooted over the next few years, Mr. Madeiros said.

They will also be removed out from neighbouring islands such as Castle which will be replanted with natives and endemics, he said.

Fighting off intrusive, would-be settlers - both plant and animal - is another constant battle.

Non native plants such as the Brazilian pepper are continually sprouting, while toads have been known to swim almost a kilometre through deadly salt water in search of a Nonsuch homestead.

The continued success of Nonsuch requires constant monitoring, but its progress has been remarkable.

"Nonsuch was a desert," Mr. Madeiros said. "There was nothing here but dead cedars and the occasional sagebrush."

Today, while you can still see many dead cedars - standing perhaps in defiance of the scale insect which devastated them 60 years ago - the forest is alive with new growth cedars so healthy and tall they belie their young age as well endemic and native plants including Foresteria, Bermuda Sedge, Pepperomia, Yellow Woods, Olivewoods, Palmettos and countless others.

The best indication of forest regrowth on the island is seen in the area Mr. Madeiros calls the "Time Tunnel". "This is exactly what our ancestors would have seen in 1609," he said, walking through the dense foliage and detailing the rich and interesting plant life.

The island's early setters relied almost entirely on natural resources for their survival in often ingenious ways, he explained.

They ate wild plants and fish, built shelters and boats from the then plentiful cedar and even learned to use many plants medicinally.

Palmetto berries were popular, Mr. Madeiros said, noting one settler wrote he preferred them to bread.

The berries, which taste like dates, are perhaps not for everyone. "They must have had some skanky bread then," Mr. Madeiros said.

The palmetto hearts were also said to make a tasty meal, while its fermented sap - bibby - proved so popular with early settlers its production had to be outlawed.

"Bermudians are very fond of anything alcoholic," visiting colonials noted, and some might say the observation is equally true today.

After a palmetto meal and a tipple of bibby, dental health conscious settlers would use the scratchy, minty leaves of the Lantana plant to brush their teeth.

Alternatively, if anything they ate produced an adverse affect, the berries of the aptly named White Stopper, were known to conquer diarrhoea.

All of these plants thrive on Nonsuch, although, those plotting a bibby comeback should note, that the law against the firewater remains on the books today.

A number of key plants, animals and insects central to Bermuda's past are missing, however.

Some are gone forever, lost to extinction over hundreds of years of erratic change and development.

Other key species, notably the Cahow , have yet to make homes on Nonsuch, although the survival of the bird and living museum are linked forever.

It was Dr. Wingate's re-discovery of the Cahow in the 1950s that led to living museum's creation.

"Finding the Cahow was a headline-making event in the international scientific community," Mr. Madeiros said. "Never before had a bird though extinct for over 300 years been found."

Government made the island a nature reserve after the discovery, but others had more ambitious plans for the former grounds of yellow fever quarantine hospital and in 1962, the project was launched.

Few thought it had much chance of success.

"No one believe an island as devastated as Nonsuch could be brought back," Mr. Madeiros said. "Once something was destroyed there was no way back."

But Dr. Wingate set up his headquarters on the island and got down to work on dual projects to cull the Cahow population back to sustainability and slowly restore the natural habitat.

The buildings from the old quarantine hospital are still used today - although now they are powered with wind and solar technology. "The solar water heater works almost too well," noted Mr. Madeiros.

Nonsuch also still houses the dead from a serious of epidemics in the 1800s which lead to the establishment of the quarantine facility.

It is not known how many people are buried in unmarked graves in its small cemetery - records were destroyed in the Hamilton Hotel fire of the 1950s - but sailors from the corners of the world are represented.

Buried alongside them is a victim of more recent tragedy. Dr. Wingate's first wife is also buried in the small cemetery.

She died following an accident on the island in1973.

Despite the graveyard, Nonsuch teems with life.

From a rare, American white pelican visiting its South beach to the nesting Great Blue Herons, the island offers an oasis to nature within modern Bermuda.

Hundreds of longtails nest on Nonsuch, crabs scramble, fish are attracted to its healthy surrounding reefs and skinks are brazen enough to join the Madeiros family at their breakfast table.

The forest - still scrubby through the 1980s - has now grown an substantial canopy layer and undergrowth is thickening.

A few of Bermuda's natural habitats had to be deliberately constructed on Nonsuch to truly reflect pre-habitation Bermuda such as freshwaters ponds and salt-water marshes.

While allowing a greater diversity of the Island's natural species a home, these changes also beckoned to unwanted foreigners.

Toads smelled the freshwater from as far as Cooper's Island and swam over 800 metres from surrounding island to get at it.

"Swimming in the ocean for them is like swimming through hydrochloric acid for you and I," Mr. Madeiros said. "We were finding dead toads with the skin burned right off them."

A toad barrier was erected to surround the pond, and those found on the Island are now solemnly escorted off Island.

A work in progress, Nonsuch Island strived to "put things back in their proper niche," Mr. Madeiros said.