The birds, which are descendants from the animals which Gerald Durrell brought to the Island in the 1970s, were loaded into crates at the Trinity site at 4am last Thursday before starting their epic journey.
It is the first time that the Zoo has sent pink pigeons to Mauritius since 1997.
Harriet Whitford, Durrell’s deputy head of birds, said that mixing Jersey’s male pigeons with Mauritius’s females would lead to the creation of a healthier and more diverse gene pool.
‘Although the numbers are now quite high, the genetic diversity is quite small, worryingly so,’ she said.
‘The type of genes that are present in Jersey are no longer present in Mauritius so by introducing the birds from Jersey, there will be a healthier genetic population.’
Ms Whitford also explained how the birds, which are classed as vulnerable, were transported.
‘The planning process took a long time and there was a lot of paperwork that we needed to sort out with both the government here and the government in Mauritius,’ she said.
‘But at 4am we loaded them into crates for a flight from Jersey to Gatwick. They were then picked up by an animal cargo agency and we stayed at Gatwick until 5pm before we went to Heathrow.
‘Then we spent all night [11 hours] on an Air Mauritius flight – they specifically wanted to take them and they did it for free. Specifically for that flight they gave all the passengers a postcard with a pink pigeon on the front of it and then collected them and sent them away for free so everyone knew that they were on the same plane as the birds.’
The birds are currently in a National Parks and Conservation Service’s quarantine centre in the north of the island but are due to be released to the Gerald Durrell Sanctuary in the south after 21 days.
As Jersey’s pink pigeons have been bred in captivity, they will remain in enclosures but their offspring are due to be released into the wild. A total of 42 remain in Trinity.
