A guide for planners and managers - IUCN

214 MARINE AND COASTAL
PROTECTED AREAS
Photo by John Clark.
The proportion of definitely inhabited islands in the Atlantic appears to be higher
than in the other two oceans, but only the southern temperate and sub-Antarctic zones
appear to have more than half of their oceanic islands still uninhabited. The remoteness
and inhospitable climates have prevented settlement, but not the destructive exploitation
of some of their wildlife. Almost all oceanic islands dominated by flowering plants
(and probably fewer such continental islands) have been more or less disturbed by
human activities (Wace, 1979). As has long been the case on the continents, the
conservation of plant and animal life on islands is increasingly about managing and
influencing the ongoing activities of people, rather than controlling their initial
invasion or exploitation.
3.2 Threats to Island Habitats from Human Activities
Although most continental islands have been accessible for many thousands of years,
people have reached oceanic islands (and thus disrupted their biota) mostly within
the last millennium. Similarly, technological developments within the last few decades
have greatly increased the accessibility of island and coastal habitats that were
formerly protected by inaccessibility (Figure II-30), according to Wace (1982).
FIGURE II-30.
Nature tourists benefit from modern transportation and
communication to get to faraway places (Palau).
If isolation and inaccessibility
have hitherto been the great conserving
forces in people’s relations with wild
nature, oceanic islands are the best
examples we have of the catastrophic
effects of the removal of these powerful
constraints. Decline and extinction of
endemic island species, such as the
dodo, giant tortoises, and some plants,
may be merely the last convulsions of
those parts of wild nature that are
unable to adapt to humans as they
reach the least accessible areas of the
planet.
Further threats to island and shoreline environments arising from human
misuse of these areas, and ecological guidelines for compatible development are
presented by McEachern and Towle (1974), W.E. Odum (1976), Clark (1977, 1996),
and Clark et al. (1980). These documents are also relevant to establishing protected
areas in estuaries and coral reef environments.
3.3 Site Selection and Island Biogeography Theory
It is evident that the design of protected island areas depends on whether the reserve
is to be established to protect indigenous fauna, flora, or communities, or to protect