Huge rush among tourists to visit natural wonders before they cease to exist

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Out of around two million people who visit the Great Barrier Reef every year, a survey in 2016 found that 69 per cent were coming to see the UNESCO World Heritage site “before it’s too late”. And no wonder. The IPCC says that even if we manage to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, 99 percent of the world’s coral will be wiped out and tourism can hasten their demise by touching or polluting the reefs.

A 2010 study found that the business of polar-bear safaris in Churchill, Canada, had an annual CO2 footprint of 20 megatons. Most visitors arrived by plane, and while 88 per cent of them said humans were responsible for climate change, only 69 per cent agreed that air travel was a contributing cause.

Along with the polar bear, one of the most iconic images of climate change must be the dramatic curves of an iceberg sculpted by the warming atmosphere. Gliding between the melting giants on a cruise ship is a haunting experience that tourists will pay huge sums for. In the early 1990s just 5,000 people visited Antarctica each year, compared to over 46,000 in 2018.

You don’t have to go to the poles to see vanishing ice. Kilimanjaro’s snowy peaks are a striking sight above the equatorial savannah of the national park, which generates €44 million ($50 million) from tourism annually. Many visitors climb to the Furtwängler Glacier — where 85 per cent of the ice has vanished over the last century. The rest is unlikely to survive much beyond mid-century.

When Montana’s Glacier National Park opened in 1910, it boasted over 100 of the ice features from which it took its name. Now, there are fewer than two dozen. So dramatic is their retreat that the park has become a centre of climate science research. Some three million hikers and holidaymakers also visit the “crown of the continent” each year, soaking in the dying days of its ice-capped glory.

The Maldives are the archetypal tourist paradise: 1,200 coral islands with white beaches rising just 2.5 meters above the turquoise waters. In 2017, the president decided to build new airports and megaresorts to accommodate seven times as many tourists, and use the revenue to build new islands and relocate communities.

It’s not just islands that are going under as sea levels rise. Wetlands like Florida’s Everglades are disappearing too. Over the last century, around half the Everglades have been drained and turned over to agriculture. Now, saltwater is seeping into what’s left, making it the only critically endangered World Heritage site in the United States.

The Galapagos will always be associated with Charles Darwin, who realised their unique wildlife had evolved over countless generations in isolation. Today, they are under siege by visitors and environmental changes are happening too rapidly for species to adapt. Ocean warming has left iconic creatures like the marine iguana starving, while UNESCO lists tourism among the greatest threats to the archipelago.

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