Do you think that more islands should be opened up or closed to visitors?

Island biodiversity

Charles Darwin made the Galapagos Islands' biodiversity famous. Because of their isolation, many islands have been able to build up unique, endemic flora and fauna, or to act as a haven for flora and fauna which has been eradicated on the mainland.

Some island species may be particularly vulnerable. For instance, birds that nest on the ground can lose all their eggs to predators introduced by man or to man himself. Creatures that cannot fly or leave quickly and have never seen man before may simply allow themselves to be slaughtered. The loss of one species can have a knock on effect on other species that either prey on it or are preyed upon by it.

Islands these days are under threat in various ways. One threat is global warming - some islands are so low-lying that they could actually disappear this century. Islands have formed the Alliance of Small Island States to pressure major polluters to take action on global warming. With others, plants and animals introduced by man (accidentally or by design) have killed off some of the native plants and animals. On others, we have displaced the local flora and fauna with out agriculture and development, and they have nowhere to go.

Most of us tend to think of tropical island paradises when we think of islands, but by the time you factor in the airport and the hotels and the shops and other development that people expect, with their requirement for fresh water and for sewage disposal and power, then a lot of their naturalness can be lost, and with it a lot of flora and fauna.

The governments of groups of islands, many of whom want tourist money, may try to reduce the damage in several ways:

• restricting tourists to only some of the islands
• restricting the percentage of an island that can be developed
• keeping buildings lower than the local trees
• restringing how many tees and how much undergrowth can be removed
• restricting the activity that can take place in the waters surrounding the island (including pollution from shipping and from the land)
• setting standards for dealing with water and waste.
• limiting the number of tourists
• allowing only environmentally friendly tourism

Where damage has already been done by introduced flora and fauna, then in some cases people are trying to eradicate the introduced species, from hedgehogs on Scottish islands to wild pigs on Santa Cruz island.

Sunday May 22 2005 is International Day for Biological Diversity.

Conservation Plan Sought for Calif. Islands

The Farallon National Wildlife Refuge is an archipelago of rocky islands off San Francisco. It is home to a large sea bird colony and a wide variety of life on land and in the Pacific Ocean. Currently no visitors are allowed; only researchers. The Fish and Wildlife Service are looking for ways to let the public enjoy the islands without doing any harm. There are endangered species on the islands, and species have previously been wiped out by humans.

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Do you think that more islands should be opened up or closed to visitors?

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