SEACOLOGY: PRESERVING ISLAND ENVIRONMENTS AND CULTURES
The Importance of Islands throughout the World
Earth is home to over 100,000 islands. The 150 largest alone have a landmass equal to the size of Europe.
One in every ten people on Earth is an islander. More than 600 million people live on islands.
Because of their isolation, islands have a disproportionately high number of endemic species. For example, the island of Madagascar has 8,000 endemic plant species, twice the number of the entire United States. The Philippines' 7,100 islands contain more endemic vertebrate species (460) than anywhere else on Earth.
Due to the high rate of endemism, islands have a disproportionately high number of endangered species. The Hawaiian Islands, dubbed "the endangered species capital of the world," are a case in point. Seventy-two percent of all the plant and animal extinctions ever recorded in the U.S. have occurred in Hawaii, a state that makes up less than two tenths of one percent of the nation's land area.
The Pacific Islands have the highest per capita number of rare, threatened and endangered species of any region on Earth. The island nations of Indonesia and the Philippines have more species threatened with extinction than any other nations on the planet.
According to the recent IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Global Species Assessment report, of all recorded species extinctions since 1500 A.D., 62 percent of mammal, 88 percent of bird, 54 percent of amphibian, 86 percent of reptile and 68 percent of mollusk extinctions were island species.
Dr. Peter J. Bryant has described the unprecedented rate of species extinctions on islands as "one of the swiftest and most profound biological catastrophes in the history of the earth."
In the last 400 years Lord Howe Island, a small island located in the Coral Sea between Australia and New Zealand, has had more bird species and subspecies extinctions than Africa, Asia and Europe combined.
Many tropical islands are surrounded by coral reefs,
often referred to as the "rainforests of the ocean" because of their astonishing diversity. Coral reefs are so endangered that it is estimated that 70 percent will cease to function as healthy ecosystems in the next 50 years unless remedial action is taken immediately.
Due to the self-contained nature of island environments, their ecosystems are extremely vulnerable to damage caused by introduced species. Destruction caused by feral pigs in Hawaii and the impact of introduced foxes and rats on seabird colonies of the islands of Alaska are but two examples.
Mangrove forests are often located on tropical islands. They act as a buffer to coastline and as nurseries for diverse species of fish. Fifty percent of the world's mangrove forests have already been destroyed as a result of commercial development, particularly industrial aquaculture.
Even small islands have large exclusive economic zones, with huge territorial claims to surrounding oceans. One nation, the Cook Islands, has a total land mass of 90 square miles (one tenth the size of Rhode Island), spread out over 850,000 square miles of ocean (one quarter the size of the U.S.). All told, the exclusive economic zones of islands cover one sixth of the world's surface and harbor one half its marine biodiversity.
Due to their low elevation levels, islands are particularly susceptible to the ill effects of rising sea levels caused by global warming.
Due to their small and isolated ecosystems, islands are ideal venues for scientific studies of Earth's environment. They serve as scientific "canaries in the coalmine" as the effects of habitat destruction and unsustainable development become all the more apparent.
Due to their typically small populations and ensuing small economies, most islands are not able to resist pressures from outside development nor can they afford appropriate environmental remediation procedures. As well, many islands do not have environmental NGOs or other types of advocacy available in the face of such outside pressures.
Due to their isolation, island cultures have until recently remained relatively intact. The introduction of television, jet transportation, etc. is adversely affecting these cultures.
