Excerpt from the Sigrid Codex:
"...Thorkyr Liefson left 14 men to tend to the mud and wood huts they had built. In three months time, he returned to the settlement with 69 Icelanders, 21 Greenlanders, and a Norwegian, 2 monks, and 26 slaves. The settlement now stood strong, and full of buildings to fill with his people. As he approached the warehouse of food the men had cached, he noticed plentitudes of rats scurry from sight. Their winter stores were infested with vermin."
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Home to a protected harbor and a mild climate, St. Anne contains some of the oldest continuous settlements on the Mossfells. This had led to much of its land has been shaped by human activity and development. This includes being the epicenter for the spread of invasive flora and fauna in the archipelago. As depicted in the Sigrid Codex, brown rats were one of the first invasive species brought to the Mossfells during Thorkyr Liefson's 1034 CE journey. During the Mossfellheim Norse Golden Age, several other invasive animal species would be introduced such as hunting dogs, pigs, and house mice. Noted in the Sigrid Codex is the disappearance of "colorful fowl, with a fanned crown" as well as "lithe black turtles, which basked upon the rocks by the surf" around this time.
During the Algonkian Introductory Period, Native Americans brought invasive species from the mainland such as turkey and hemp. However the most devastating introductions would occur during the British and American Colonial Period. During this period, the biodiversity on St. Anne and neighboring St. James plummeted as invasive animals such as cats, rabbits, deer, sheep, goats, cattle, along with invasive plants such as English ivy and Japanese honeysuckle quickly pushed native species to the brink.
It is thought that since 1034 CE, St. Anne has lost an estimated 95% of it's endemic species - the highest amount in the entire archipelago. As a result, the island's ecology is now remarkably similar to the islands of New Shoreham, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard. Farmland and pasture covers much of the western and northern portions, while more urbanized areas are concentrated on the south and east. Very little of the original forest and brackish swamp remains. The remaining 5% of endemic species on St. Anne are hardy generalists, able to cope with changes in this new world.