Impacts of tourism on threatened species in the Pacific region: a review

Abstract

The Pacific region has high levels of endemism and contains three of the world's global biodiversity hotspots. Despite its conservation significance, the region faces difficulties in protecting its biodiversity primarily due to restricted knowledge, limited local capacity and financial constraints. Tourism has been increasingly promoted in the region as a means of promoting and financing conservation activities. To date however, there have been few studies looking at the impacts of increasing tourism on biodiversity in the Pacific. This paper reviews publicly available data on the contribution of tourism to the threatened status of Pacific biodiversity. The ~1900 IUCN Red listed species in the region are threatened by a number of factors that can be grouped into four major processes; habitat loss (55%), overexploitation (32%), invasive species (22%) and pollution (14%). Tourism, as a specific threatening process, affects 15% of all assessed listed species with its impacts more apparent in countries with relatively large and significant tourism industries. Most of the individual species reported as threatened by tourism are corals (83%). Terrestrial species may be equally threatened but the absence of National Lists of threatened species and incomplete IUCN Red Lists for all countries in the region highlights significant knowledge gaps making it difficult to fully assess the impacts of tourism on all taxa. While sustainable tourism development currently appears to be a suitable income-generating and conservation-promoting activity in the region, the short and long-term impacts of this development must be carefully monitored and addressed.