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Troubles in a Tropical Paradise

This story starts with an American doctoral student who wanted to study the effects of varanid lizards as top predators on smaller lizards that are intermediate predators. I was to be an outside cosupervisor and help him with his project. He came to Queensland, Australia, in the early 1990s and eventually chose an area on Hinchinbrook Island off the coast of North Queensland to set up a series of experimental plots. Hinchinbrook Island, 8 km off the coast in the Queensland tropics, is almost 400 km² in area and about 35 km north to south. He set up an experiment in a 4 × 4 design with 16 plots and built 16 fences, 14 × 14 m, each enclosing 200 m² of habitat. The fences either excluded all lizards, excluded only varanid lizards, excluded only small lizards (skinks of several species), or excluded no lizards (fencing controls). They were big and not very pretty. They were also hidden from view and away from public access.

The plots were spread over an area of sandy soil that is long and narrow and covered in a mixture of Melaleuca and vine forest. The area is behind a dune ridge at the southern end of a beach that is nearly 8 km long in an area called Ramsey Bay. The area is sheltered from sea breezes and backs onto an enormous mangrove swamp, which then backs onto the Hinchinbrook Channel.

In some ways it was a paradise. After the fences were installed, the first comprehensive management plan for Hinchinbrook Island National Park and World Heritage Area was drawn up, and it designated our site as a Scientific Special Purposes Reserve. The original doctoral student abandoned his project, and I and a local coinvestigator took over more of the management and financing of the project. We recruited some new students, added some unfenced control plots, and started keeping track of more of the flora and fauna so we could examine effects further down the food chain on spiders and leaf and soil invertebrates. It looked like we were set for a long-term project, and we happily settled in.

A typical field trip involved driving from our home base at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville to Cardwell, about 170 km along the two-lane coast highway. Then we rode in the commercial ferry across the Hinchinbrook Channel and Missionary Bay, down a narrow, winding, mangrove-lined channel, to a small landing where day-tripping tourists could walk on a trail across the dunes and spend an hour admiring the 8-km Ramsey Bay beach and hikers could start or finish their walks on the Thorsborne Trail, a famous 32-km-long hiking track. The owner of the ferry company was supportive of our research and carried us and our gear at reduced rates and even carried fresh groceries from a shop on the mainland. So we lived in luxury, with lots of fresh water, a gas fridge and lights, and a civilized campground.

For 22 hours of most days, we felt that we had the island to ourselves. After an hour or so on the beach the day-trippers were bundled back onto the ferry, and the hikers quickly walked off down the beach to the trailhead. Our tents were set up just behind the dunes. We had a shower tent and could shower sparingly in fresh water. In the morning, we could wander across the dunes and have 8 km of beautiful tropical beach to ourselves, since the ferry with its tourists and backpackers didn’t arrive until about 11 a.m. If we were feeling brave, we could go for a swim in the ocean. Although Missionary Bay, 100 m or so behind the dunes, has a massive population of Saltwater Crocodiles, they are almost never seen on the ocean side of the island.

Work on this tropical island was not without problems, however. One was how to dispose of human waste. Backpackers on Hinchinbrook at the time were provided with composting toilets at a few designated camping sites, but Ramsey Bay was not one of them. They were allowed to use the cathole technique (dig a hole at least 15 cm deep, do your business, fill it in) when not at those sites. The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (Parks and Wildlife) suggested we should either do that or use a Porta-Potti.

Long-term use of a Porta-Potti by up to five people on three- to four-week field trips is a grim business. Even our friendly ferry operator wasn’t thrilled with the idea of us emptying it into the toilet on the ferry. We tried catholes, but they quickly reached an impossible density. We were getting desperate when a creative Parks and Wildlife employee pointed out that just over the dunes were 8 km of ocean, uninhabited by anyone, and 22 hours a day, unobserved by anyone. In Queensland, the parks service has jurisdiction above the high tide line, but the marine authorities have jurisdiction below the high tide line.

The solution the Parks and Wildlife employee suggested, which carried us through the next several years with only a couple of glitches, was a simple one: Acquire a folding frame with a toilet seat, a small shovel, and plastic garbage bags. Carry the frame and a bag over the dunes, below the high tide line (and thus out of Parks and Wildlife jurisdiction), look both ways to make sure no errant backpackers or tourists are about, sit down, do your business, put paper in garbage bag to be disposed of along with other paper waste, pick up excrement with shovel, break it up, and throw it well out into the water. This may sound horrifying, but truly, it isn’t. Dumping sewage in the ocean works fine when population density is four people per 8 km of coastline. A single dugong produces far more waste than we ever did, and it is a very large ocean; if we had been on a boat with fewer than seven people on board, it would actually have been legal, and still would be, according to Queensland marine regulations.

It did lead to a (very) few situations, though, when people forgot to look to see whether the toilet seat and shovel were missing before going out to enjoy the morning light or forgot to look for backpackers. One memorable time, someone was just settling into business when a low sightseeing flight passed overhead, then circled back for another look, with everyone waving and photographing out the windows.

Another ongoing problem was insects. With sand dunes blocking much of the ocean breeze, and a vast mangrove swamp 100 m or less behind us, mosquitoes were common, and anyone who was sensitive to sandfly bites quickly became covered in reddish spots about the size of a 10-cent piece. In summer, there were swarms of biting flies of various species, some biting very painfully, some (even worse) painlessly, so the first indication of an attack was the blood running down, often from your face or your ear, as we tended to wear long sleeves and long pants tucked into long socks, even in midsummer in 30+ ^oC heat.

The only good thing about the insect problem was that, after being swatted, the larger flies worked well as bait. We tied them to a bit of fishing line on the end of a stick, a most entertaining method to catch skinks. One of the small skink species, the Black-Throated Rainbow Skink (Carlia rostralis), seldom emerged from under vegetation. They are extremely aggressive in catching flying insects, however. We could swoop a dead fly above a bit of cover, and with luck a skink would leap out, bite down, and hang on for dear life as we swung it in and captured it.

We also dealt with problems with our operating permits. In Queensland, the Parks and Wildlife Service often seems to feel that scientists are annoyances that want to interfere with the proper management of parks. As a result, they can be very difficult about permitting. This isn’t helped by the fact that the service likes to consult with local managers, who are very mobile; with each promotion, they move to a new place, so they often have little idea of the history of the places they are managing.

Initially, I had assumed that, since we were working in a Scientific Special Purposes Reserve that had been designated specifically because our project was there, we should have relatively little trouble with permits. Being written into the management plan should take care of the history problem. It didn’t work out that way. Permits last anywhere from 18 months to 3 years, maximum, and almost every time they needed to be renewed, we had a fight on our hands.

Typically, a new local manager would go out to the island for a look around. Sometimes, they would actually decide to check out the Scientific Special Purposes Reserve. When that happened, there was trouble. They were horrified. Ugly, intrusive structures in what was supposed to be pristine wilderness! What if a member of the public encountered them! Unthinkable!

We had put signs in the places most likely to be encountered by anyone who strayed off the marked path from the landing to the beach, explaining the nature of the research, and had never received a complaint. The project was in management plan and was gathering valuable long-term data on the ecology of the interdunal environment. That typically didn’t deter the parks people, who almost always wanted to revoke our permit.

One local manager was absolutely adamant. He was shocked and horrified. Our project was a blight on the landscape. That it was part of the management plan was irrelevant, that we had the opportunity to build a unique data set was irrelevant too, since ecological knowledge is irrelevant to maintaining walking tracks and composting toilets. We would have to be out in six months. After some coaxing, he arranged to bring the regional permit manager and meet with us on the island to look over the project and discuss it further.

We drove up to Cardwell and met him, thinking we were all going over with the Parks and Wildlife people on the local manager’s official Parks and Wildlife boat. We met them as he was launching it, and it turned out that as civilians who hadn’t had the proper inductions, we weren’t allowed to ride along. We rushed back and caught the morning ferry. As the ferry was pulling out of the harbor, we were just in time to see the Parks and Wildlife boat stopped in the middle of the harbor, with the local manager, stripped to his shorts, jumping off the back. He had forgotten to put the drain plugs in before he launched, and his boat was sinking.

Fortunately, he got the drain plugs in, the bilge pump worked, and apparently there were no hungry crocodiles in the harbor. The managers joined us on the island, with the local manager in a rather subdued mood. We inspected the pens, showed them our signage and camping area, explained that it was all completely out of public view and that the only comments we had ever had, which were very few, had been curious and positive when people discovered what we were doing. We indicated that of course we would leave the site in its original state when we eventually finished.

The local manager was still adamant; he wanted us to wrap up and take things down and get off the island and was only willing to look at six months. We were asking for three years. We explained that it would take time to understand all the effects, and this was a great opportunity to gain an understanding of the ecology of interdunal systems that should apply to hundreds of islands managed by the Parks and Wildlife Service along the Queensland coast. The regional permits manager, who had the final word, said he had reached a decision; he would give us 18 months, and after 12 months we would reinspect the system and look at our permit returns and data analysis and renegotiate.

I felt a wave of relief that our large investment of time, money, and student futures wasn’t going to collapse in a heap. I thanked the regional manager and assured him that we would take full advantage of the time and demonstrate that the project was worth continuing. The local manager was clearly unhappy and said so. My JCU coinvestigator turned to the local manager and, in a moment that horrified me, said, Fortunately, that won’t matter—in a year, you’ll have been promoted and be somewhere else anyway.

I had a brief vision of the local manager hanging on just to deny us our permit, but fortunately, it didn’t happen. The project continued, students finished, more students started, and the project might still be going to this day … except for other problems that finally killed it.

First, Parks and Wildlife decided to build an elevated walkway past half of our plots. They were worried about erosion caused by tourists walking to and from the ferry landing and that the beach might eventually cut the dunes to the point at which an extreme weather event would erode through them and cut the northern part of the island off from the southern part. The walkway would lead tourists to an area where they could cross at a natural rocky region less likely to do that.

The walkway would mean that our plots would be exposed to public view; they were not pretty and would have to go. In the meantime, nature intervened. A category 5 tropical cyclone, Yasi, passed through the study area on the night of 2–3 February 2011. It irreparably damaged the fences and severely disturbed the vegetation. A few months later, we paid to remove the debris, and our experiment in paradise finally ended.

In the end it was all worthwhile. Two people finished doctorates on the island; two others finished bachelors of science (with honors) degrees—a research degree with a publishable thesis. Two others did projects leading to parts of masters’ degrees. Many volunteers got a taste of the joys and pains of fieldwork. Hundreds of glorious tropical sunrises were seen over 8 km of nearly pristine sand, and hundreds of late afternoon breaks were taken in the sea breezes on top of the dunes, relaxing after hard days of data collection. Several papers have been published thus far and several more are still in progress.