For the broken-hearted - PHOTO

A heart-shaped island that became a lovers' favourite now looks like a perfect destination for the romantically desolate after two strips of forest were bulldozed - leaving scars that look like sticking plasters.Lovers' Island - known locally by the more prosaic name of Galešnjak - is located in the Adriatic Sea, off the coast of the popular tourism destination of Croatia.The uninhabited island caused a stir several years ago when eagle-eyed Google Earth users realised that it looked like a clumsily scrawled heart.But a new picture from DigitalGlobe's GeoEye 1 satellite - incidentally taken just around Valentine's Day this year - shows Lovers' Island looking rather more forlorn after bulldozers carved swathes across it that look like two giant bandages.But the island's owner, Tonci Juresko, vowed that the heart-break was only temporary, and that the bulldozed strips are destined to become groves of olive trees.'I will plant olive trees and the island will be more beautiful than before,' he told Croatian news site Jutarnji List, adding that he had been asked many times to organise weddings there but had been unable to because of the mess.Mr Juresko said he plans to plant 250 new trees on the island and also to restore its pier, which was built 80 years ago by his grandfather.'It is certain that we will soon have a wedding on the island,' he said. He added that interest in his island had increased since reports emerged claiming that Angelina Jolie was linked to the purchase of another £12.2million heart-shaped island in the U.S.'We tried offering Valentine's Day trips there but of course that's only once a year and it wasn't really that profitable,' said Mr Juresko.'But since reports about the apparent interest of Angelina Jolie in the 11-acre American island of Petra, we have realised thanks to all the phone calls we have been getting that there is a lot of potential for our island to be used as a wedding destination.'The problem is that despite the romantic appearance from the air, in reality the island is covered in rocks and surrounded by a rocky beach - making access difficult for the average bride in a wedding dress and very difficult for wedding photographs.Now following the massive interest, Mr Juresko has managed to get funding to develop the island and the bulldozers have moved in to level broad strips on the surface to make way for a grove of olive trees, to be planted and to improve the jetty to allow wedding parties to land.He said: 'In future it will be possible to have great photographs on the ground as well as from the air, and because it's an island it's very private. People can be as loud as they want. It's the perfect desert island.'The building work was discovered when Google Earth updated its image showing two massive scars across the heart-shaped island, but Mr Juresko insisted they would soon heal and leave the island with a healthy green foliage that he hoped would eventually extend across the rest of the island.Although they may build a chapel, there are no plans to offer anything more complicated in terms of accommodation.Mr Juresko added: 'People can stay the night, but they have to bring their own boat and moor up at the jetty. In theory that means we can accommodate as many people as want to come.'Just 130,000 square yards in area, Galešnjak Island is located in the Adriatic's Pašman channel, between the islands of Pašman and the town of Turanj on mainland Croatia.One of the world's few naturally occurring love heart-shaped objects, its unusual geography was first recorded in the early 19th century by Napoleon's cartographer Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré.He included it in his 1806 atlas of the Dalmatian coast, kept today at the National and University Library in Zagreb, but it came to global attention in February 2009 when it was highlighted by Google Earth.Mr Juresko and his family were subsequently swamped with requests from smitten holidaymakers who wanted to spend a romantic break there.Vlad Juresko told news agencies at the time that the response had been 'incredible'. 'We think it is the most perfect heart-shaped island in the world. Nobody lives there so if lovers really do want to spend time alone it's the perfect desert island,' he said.'We always thought it looked a bit like a heart but since it's been on Google Earth everyone else has seen it too and the whole world seems to want to stay here.'(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az