Australian Island Arks

Conservation, Management and Opportunities

Dorian Moro, Derek Ball, Sally Bryant, Dorian Moro, Derek Ball, Sally Bryant

• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781486306602
• eBook ISBN: 9781486306626
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Biological Sciences

Australia is the custodian of a diverse range of continental and oceanic islands. From Heard and Macquarie in the sub-Antarctic, to temperate Lord Howe and Norfolk, to the tropical Cocos (Keeling) Islands and the islands of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia's islands contain some of the nation's most iconic fauna, flora and ecosystems. They are a refuge for over 35% of Australia's threatened species and for many others declining on mainland Australia. They also have significant cultural value, especially for Indigenous communities, and economic value as centres for tourism.

Australian Island Arks presents a compelling case for restoring and managing islands to conserve our natural heritage. With contributions from island practitioners, researchers and policy-makers, it reviews current island management practices and discusses the need and options for future conservation work. Chapters focus on the management of invasive species, threatened species recovery, conservation planning, Indigenous cultural values and partnerships, tourism enterprises, visitor management, and policy and legislature. Case studies show how island restoration and conservation approaches are working in Australia and what the emerging themes are for the future.

Australian Island Arks will help island communities, managers, visitors and decision-makers to understand the current status of Australia's islands, their management challenges, and the opportunities that exist to make best use of these iconic landscapes.

1

Introduction: Australia’s island arks

Dorian Moro, Derek Ball and Sally L. Bryant

Introduction

Australia holds custodianship of one of the most diverse sets of island landscapes of any country. These islands include tropical atolls (e.g. Cocos-Keeling) and coral cays, tropical, subtropical and temperate continental islands, sea stacks such as those off Tasmania, the world’s largest sand island (K’gari-Fraser Island), oceanic islands (such as the exposed sea-mounts that form Lord Howe and Norfolk), and finally sub-Antarctic islands at the higher latitudes (Heard-McDonald and Macquarie Islands). Additionally, our islands vary in topography, reaching altitudes as high as 2745 m on Heard Island. As a consequence of this geographical and altitudinal spread, species and ecosystem diversity is understandably high.

Offshore islands under Australian stewardship number some 8411 (Woinarski et al. 2014). These islands contribute 40% of Australia’s coastline (Geoscience Australia 2004), and thus a significant proportion of Australia’s coastal landscape despite representing only 1.26% of its landmass (Woinarski et al. 2014). Many islands are repositories or in some cases essential locations for a staggering amount of Australia’s biological diversity (Gibson and McKenzie 2012). They support over 35% of threatened species listed under the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Importantly for conservation purposes, islands offer relatively enclosed areas where key threaten ing processes, such as feral mammals, may be cost-effectively eliminated. Furthermore, incursions by feral animals, weeds and diseases that continue to impact biological diversity on mainland Australia can be managed through robust biosecurity arrangements on islands. Finally, islands provide important ecosystem services to human wellbeing, such as fisheries, energy, freshwater, agriculture and traditional ecological knowledge (Wong et al. 2005; Vigilante et al. 2013). They therefore play a critical role in the local economy, for the people who reside there, and more widely for the nation. For example, Phillip Island (Victoria), Kangaroo Island and the Whitsunday Islands all rank highly in terms of tourism economy relative to other tourism areas across mainland Australia (Tourism Research Australia 2011).

Australia’s islands form the foundation of an estimated A$13 billion/annum nature-based tourism industry. For example, in 2012 the Great Barrier Reef alone contributed A$5.7 billion to the Australian economy and sustained 69 000 full-time jobs (Deloitte Access Economics 2013). In a similar vein, in 2013–14, internationally renowned Phillip Island – primarily, Phillip Island Nature Parks – in Victoria was estimated to contribute A$1.3 billion in total tourism output and, directly and indirectly, to employ 6400 people (Tourism Victoria 2015). On Kangaroo Island in South Australia, tourism contributed A$134 million (c.15%) to the regional economy in 2015, employed 500 people directly and helped to support a further 900 employees indirectly.

At a global scale, islands are recognised as important areas that support biodiversity in terrestrial, freshwater and thus connected marine environments. Yet this biodiversity can be highly vulnerable to intense human visitation and use (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2014). Surprisingly, the critical importance of islands to conservation of Australia’s biological diversity and regional economies has not received a commensurate amount of management attention or investment by this nation. Co-operative research centres and aligned management efforts have been formed for other landscapes – coral reefs, rainforests, deserts, the Antarctic and savannahs – but not islands. Islands are also overlooked within protected area systems. For example, nationally, less than 30% of islands are protected within Nature Reserves (Geo-Sciences Australia, unpublished data).

Historical context of Australia’s use of its islands

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have maintained continuous connection with most of Australia’s islands since before they were created by the 100+ m rise in global sea levels that stabilised ~6000 years ago. Tasmanian Aborigines, for example, harvested short-tailed shearwaters or mutton birds (Ardenna tenuirostris) and their eggs from offshore Tasmanian islands for generations. This farming continues today for many families as an important cultural practice and commercial industry (Skira 1997). Similarly, the Traditional Owners of the coast of the Kimberley region have had a close association with the coastal landscape, including the offshore islands which hold great significance and value for them (Vigilante et al. 2013). Many islands, such as these Kimberley islands, are components of larger interlinked Indigenous cultural landscapes and seascapes that are of enormous significance to Traditional Owners all around Australia.

Historical use of islands around Australia by Europeans dates as early as the 1600s, when some were used as staging posts for mariners to record their visit: Dutch mariner Dirk Hartog placed a flattened pewter plate on what is now Dirk Hartog Island off Western Australia as a record of his visit there in 1616 (Playford 1998). Further north, with the establishment of towns such as Roebourne (1866) and Cossack (1972) on the Pilbara mainland, nearby offshore islands in the Dampier archipelago became bases for fishing, pearling and whaling operations particularly because of their proximity to sheltered bays in which to moor vessels (Morris 1989).

During the late 18th and the 19th centuries, Australian islands were also used as important penal colonies because of their remoteness and ocean barriers. Australia itself was viewed as an island on which to maroon convicts, by the British Empire. Many of Australia’s offshore islands, especially Tasmania, became in situ jails for convicts seen as in need of additional security: Norfolk Island (~1500 km east of Australia) was reinstated in 1824 as a place to send the worst convict reoffenders. Queensland’s North Stradbroke Island became the site of Australia’s first Catholic mission in 1843 (Carter et al. 1994). Other islands such as Barrow, Bernier, Dorre and Rottnest Islands (Western Australia) or Tasmania’s Flinders Island were used in the late 1800s/early 1900s as quarantine areas to isolate Aboriginal people or those suffering illnesses such as tuberculosis, measles or venereal disease (Jebb 1984).

Islands were viewed as reliable sources of marine wildlife and many offered important resting sites for whalers and sealers. Due to their remoteness, men were often left onshore with provisions for months, to establish bases, exploit the resources and await returning vessels. Macquarie Island was exploited for fur and oil from elephant seals and four species of penguins in the early 1800s (Cumpston 1968). Other islands (e.g. Norfolk Island; St Peter’s Island, Tasmania; Moreton Island, Queensland) were used to establish whaling stations or turtle canneries. Green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) were exploited for the European and Asian markets in canneries such as those on Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef; female turtles were preferred for their superior flesh, and were killed and rendered into tins of soup (Limpus 2008). Commercial exploitation of Western Australian turtles was operational from at least the 1930s, with green turtles harvested from the Montebello Islands and at reefs around Flying Foam Islands (Western Australia: Limpus 2008). Other island wildlife exploited by Europeans included mutton birds and beche de mer, among other fisheries (Hourston 2010).

Islands have long been used as navigational aids and lighthouse stations. During the 1950s, due to their remoteness from European and eastern Australian cities, islands in the Montebello archipelago were used by the British for nuclear tests, with no recognition of the island wildlife that occurred there. The European mindset that islands were waste grounds and there only to be exploited was typical at that time. However, historical visitations on islands have had consequences, particularly the introduction of non-indigenous species that have had major impacts on local insular and typically predator-naïve fauna and succulent flora.

A significant number – and geographical area – of Australian islands have little or no human visitation, and continue to protect biodiversity values regardless of the islands’ formal protected area status. Unlike other parts of the world, the majority of Australia’s islands are not populated; less than 1% of Australia’s total population lives on islands and those that are occupied comprise only ~30 of the larger island groups (ABS 1999). Many have one or more non-exclusive or complementary uses such as mining and resource extraction industries, tourism, farming and as urban or rural residences. The impacts of these uses may be significant and contrary to biodiversity conservation unless carefully mitigated. Poor or absent biosecurity arrangements leave islands open to further ingress of non-indigenous species that might have negative impacts at the ecosystem level. Overuse of resources such as freshwater, or pollution of water by waste management landfills, may have high and chronic impacts. Poorly managed access to the coastline by vehicles, particularly in erosion- prone areas, causes degra dation of habitats and can lead to progressive loss of soil stability and subsequent vegetation loss. Not all island vegetation communities are fire-tolerant, and fires have the potential to remove all vegetation cover, leading to local extinctions for those species unable to find refuge. Finally, artificial lighting can result in severe disruptions to breeding for some species, such as marine turtles (Kamrowski et al. 2014) and seabirds (Montevecchi 2006).

The importance of islands in the Australian context

Together with their surrounding marine environments, islands have intrinsic values as functioning and interlinked ecosystems supporting high levels of biodiversity, which in turn provides economic benefits for tourism. Many islands have been vested as nature reserves, national parks or World Heritage Areas due to their significance for nature conservation, geomorphology, as examples of ongoing ecological and biophysical processes or the role they played in human cultural history.

Islands are logical places to safeguard Australia’s biological diversity. They are important breeding grounds for seabirds, marine turtles and seals, with many species breeding primarily on islands (e.g. short-tailed shearwater, little penguin (Eudyptula minor) and lesser frigatebird (Fregata ariel). Islands offer essential refugia for common as well as for rare and endangered species. These either occur only on islands, or have their most secure populations on islands. Unfortunately, Australia has a poor mammal extinction record on islands: of 28 endemic land mammal species in Australia extirpated since 1788, seven (25%) were island endemics (Woinarski et al. 2015). A further two species have recently become extinct: the Christmas Island pipistrelle (Pipistrellus murrayi) in 2009 (Lunney et al. 2011) and Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) in 2016 (Gynther et al. 2016).

Islands, because of their isolation and size, often present the opportunity to holistically restore the landscape in a way that is not possible on the mainland. Eradication (rather than just control) of non-indigenous species is more feasible on islands where suitable biosecurity is in place to reduce the risks of reinvasions. Isolation (and remoteness) also limits the risks from other ecosystem impacts such as disease or further land clearing.

Islands offer value for people. Many islands have deep and abiding spiritual connections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: Australia’s island arks
• 2 Values of islands across Australia’s states and territories
• 3 Enhancing island conservation outcomes: the policy and legal context, need, and options
• 4 The 4Cs approach to island management
• 5 What’s next on the list? Prioritising management actions on Australia’s islands
• 6 Island pest management
• 7 Australian islands as ‘arks’ for biodiversity
• 8 Indigenous Protected Areas and islands
• 9 Integrating resource development with island conservation: Barrow Island as a model for conservation and development
• 10 Australia’s World Heritage islands
• 11 The interplay between tourism and conservation on islands
• 12 Partnerships for island conservation: it’s all about people
• 13 Value of islands for the marine environment
• 14 Ecological restoration on New Zealand islands: a history of shifting scales and paradigms
• 15 Managing islands in the context of climate change
• 16 Australian islands: current thinking, emerging themes and a way forward to manage these offshore assets
• Index