Vincent has been a Specialist Group member since 2001 and a lecturer in ecology at the Biosciences department, University of Mauritius. He started volunteering in 1987 in the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, a local conservation NGO, where he later worked for his B.Sc. He earned a Master’s degree from UEA, Norwich (UK) then worked at the Mauritius Herbarium, a great place to perfect one’s plant identification skills, before joining the University where he is a tenured academic since 2003. He is doing a PhD at the Université de la Réunion. Vincent is the Chair of the National Invasive Alien Species Committee (Mauritius), where he is currently helping to produce the country’s first IAS National Strategy. He is also an active member of the Wildlife and National Parks Advisory Council and the National Threatened Native Plant Committee which is reviewing the IUCN conservation status of Mauritian flowering plants. These are excellent venues to swiftly turn one’s research findings into meaningful policies and measures.

Vincent also has a soft spot for land snails and discovered and described several species endemic to the region and is currently finalising a book on the land snails of the Mascarene islands with co-author Owen Griffiths, a member of the Mollusc Specialist Group. Vincent’s main research interest however is the ecology and conservation of Mascarene terrestrial ecosystems with focus on the mechanisms of native forest degradation by the hordes of invasive alien species which today pose the greatest threat to the conservation of the region’s native terrestrial ecosystems. His main concern is finding ways to save more than the insignificantly tiny patches of forest (0.02% of the island) currently under conservation management in Mauritius. Vincent’s botanical contributions include: relocation of several plant species once believed extinct, finding new species and making additions and corrections to the island’s native Flora.