parakeet have vanished. The others were likely made extinct by a combination of excessive hunting and deforestation by humans, as well as the invasive species brought with them (through predation and competition). On Mauritius, the echo parakeet coexisted with the broad-billed parrot (Lophopsittacus mauritianus) and the Mascarene grey parakeet (Psittacula bensoni), and the Réunion parakeet lived alongside the Mascarene parrot and the Mascarene grey parakeet. Newton's parakeet and the Rodrigues parrot (Necropsittacus rodricanus) lived on nearby Rodrigues. Worldwide, many parrots have been driven to extinction by humans; island populations have been especially vulnerable, partially due to their tameness. To the sailors who visited the Mascarene Islands from the late 16th-century onwards, the fauna was largely viewed as a source of food. Many other endemic species of Mauritius were lost after the arrival of humans to the island, including the dodo (Raphus cucullatus, which has since become a symbol of extinction), so the ecosystem of the island is severely damaged and hard to reconstruct. The surviving endemic fauna is still seriously threatened. Before humans arrived, Mauritius was entirely covered in forests, almost all of which have since been lost. The last report of the Réunion parakeet is that of the French colonist Joseph-François Charpentier de Cossigny from 1732, and Hume expressed surprise that the population disappeared so quickly after the arrival of humans, considering the available habitat and the fact that the Mauritius population managed to survive. Hume estimated that the Réunion parakeet had gone extinct due to hunting and deforestation around 1730–50. Jones and colleagues pointed out that other Mascarene birds survived into the 18th and 19th centuries without being noted, and suggested that the Réunion parakeet could have survived as late as the early 19th century (Jossigny's sketch could support the parakeet surviving at least until c. 1770). Cossigny's final 1732 account of the Réunion parakeet (and the last of the Mascarene grey parakeet) reads as follows: The Dutch soldier Johannes Pretorius (on Mauritius from 1666 to 1669) reported that there were many parrots, and that echo parakeets were caught alive with nets, but could sometimes not be caught, being too high up in trees. Parrots were often caught to be given as gifts or sold during the 17th century and were probably kept alive on Mauritius before being exported. That the parrots kept to high trees indicates they had become wary of humans at this time. In 1754