Tourist Islands Fear Eco Damage

Two French islands in the Mediterranean will introduce stringent new restrictions on tourism this week, limiting the number of visitors and imposing a smoking ban as part of a new European effort to tackle the growing problem of ecological damage.

The Ile de Porquerolles and Port-Cros, south of Marseille, are to allow no more than 5,000 and 1,500 visitors per day respectively, according to the Iles d'Or national park that administers them. Smoking has been banned to prevent forest fires.

The measures come after a European Commission report on beaches earmarked 10 major 'dead zones' with high levels of pollution, including oil slicks and the chemicals used to disperse them. In the report, Italy and Denmark emerge among the worst-hit countries with dozens of beaches banned to bathers for health reasons.

Last week the Spanish environment minister, Christina Narbona, said Spain was in danger of 'killing the goose that laid the golden egg' after an alarming report into the damage caused by mass tourism to the Balearic and Canary Islands. The report said the main damage was eroded beaches, pollution from cars, excessive energy use and sewage systems that cannot cope.

Heriberto Davila of the Ecologists in Action group called for the reintroduction of a tourist 'eco tax' in the Balearic Islands, which include Majorca and Menorca. The levy of one euro per day per tourist to help pay for waste management was introduced in April 2002 by the regional socialist government but scrapped last year when a right-wing administration took over the local body. The argument for scrapping the levy was that tourism, which accounts for 12 per cent of Spanish gross national product, had declined.

Davila said the rare examples of sustainable tourism in Spain, including the volcanic island of Lanzarote, are now facing undue pressure, precisely because they are more attractive to holidaymakers than the concrete housing and hotel estates lining the coast of the mainland. 'The ratio of three tourists to one permanent resident is far too high, not only because it leads to environmental degradation. It also destroys the social fabric of places like the Canaries,' he said.

The measures taken in the Iles d'Or in the south of France are aimed at reducing - or at least preventing an increase in the 1.5 million holidaymakers that visit the islands every year.

Nicolas Gérardin, manager of the Iles d'Or national park, said the real solutions lay on the mainland: 'One disinsentive would be to reduce the amount of parking available at the ferry port. We also have to convince the ferry operators to turn away customers when the quota has been reached. That is not easy.'

Gérardin said biologists had already noted damage to several rare plant species and a decline in the number of peregrine falcons due to too many walkers around the cliffs of the islands.

'These islands, which were privately owned until the Second World War, have become a kind of easy-access exotic paradise for people fleeing mainland concrete. The only way to save them is to keep people away,' he said.