And yet "we only know the tip of the iceberg, " says ecologist Benoit Fontaine of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

BBC: Magazine

In 1982, a French scientist named Roger Bour of the Paris Natural History Museum concluded that the Schweigger specimen didn't originate from Aldabra, after all.

WSJ

He joined a team of researchers sent to Mauritania by the Museum of Natural History in Paris, an institution he was to be associated with all his life.

ECONOMIST: Th��odore Monod

In 1812, a German botanist named August Friedrich Schweigger studied tortoise specimens at the natural history museum in Paris.

WSJ

In a letter sent to the World Heritage Centre in Paris, the Department of Natural Resources and Tourism says the 50km (30-mile) section of road across the park will "continue to be managed mainly for tourism and administrative purposes, as it is now".

BBC: Serengeti road scrapped over wildlife concerns

President Sarkozy of France recently asked ten teams of leading architects to re-imagine Paris as a city fully integrated with the natural environment.

CNN: Green walls: the growing success of 'vegitecture'