A guide for planners and managers - IUCN

PART II
Protected Areas for Small Islands
Managers of islands may have several kinds of difficulties in enforcing quarantine
controls to protect their native ecosystems:
– Difficulties in policing any sort of import regulations in the relaxed and informal
atmosphere of officialdom that is typical of small communities.
– Difficulties in predicting which species may be harmful in the ecological context
of a particular island
– Difficulties in controlling imports, whether intentional or accidental, in the face
of a large-scale tourist invasion that may, moreover, be an important source of
revenue.
Despite such administrative difficulties, the protection of island habitats and
their biota should always take cognizance of the biological factors resulting from
isolation that may influence the persistence of native biota and the options for growth
of crops.
Establish means of estimating the environmental impacts of tourist invasion of
islands.
Tourism is seen as the fastest growing economic development in the Pacific
islands, with enormous potential to change both the social lives and the environments
of islanders (Turner and Ash, 1975) and is the mainstay of the economy of many island
states, such as Seychelles (Shah, 1995; Emerton, 1997). Despite the large capital
infrastructure needed, and the environmental change that mass tourism brings
wherever it becomes established, tourist entrepreneurs are not required by governments
to produce either social or environmental impact assessments of the results of
importing large numbers of people into islands (or elsewhere) under tourist development
schemes.
Changes brought by tourism may be lamented or admired retrospectively, but
few attempts are made to anticipate them, so that the “carrying capacity” of fragile
insular ecosystems can be defined in terms of tourist numbers, duration of stay, or
modes of behavior. Tourists who travel in busloads from airport to motel to enjoyment
sites have different environmental impacts than small parties of independent hikers.
The management and development of national parks demand some assessment of
the economic and environmental impacts of different types of visitors, as do islands,
to determine their tourist carrying capacities and to protect island habitats (Figure
II-36).
Integrate the management and conservation of terrestrial and marine resources
on and around islands.
The sea has a direct influence upon the terrestrial ecology of small islands and
on the economic systems of islanders that settle them. This interdependence should
be recognized in the development and the conservation of islands for human benefit.
221