Crabs vs miners on Australian 'Galapagos'

Crabs vs miners on Australian 'Galapagos'
By Nick Squires on Christmas Island
24/05/2007
Telegraph UK

An island dubbed the Kingdom of the Crabs is divided over plans to turn it into an eco-tourism destination.

Christmas Island - which is known for its annual migration of 50 million bright red land crabs from the forest to the sea - has relied for 100 years on the mining of phosphate, which is exported around the world as fertiliser.


The annual red crab migration could prove a major attraction on Christmas Island, where Flying Fish Cove is the main harbour

But this month the Australian government announced a ban on any new mining, saying that there would be "an unacceptable impact" on threatened species, including the rare Abbott's booby, the Christmas Island frigate bird and an endemic pipistrelle bat.

The decision was encouraged by lobbying from Prince Philip, as patron of the WorldWide Fund, and Sir David Attenborough, who called the Indian Ocean island "Kingdom of the Crabs" after narrating a documentary bout its wildlife.

Australian conservationists, who were appalled at plans by the Christmas Island Phosphate Company to bulldoze pristine monsoon forests in order to extract the rich phosphate deposits, hailed the ban as a victory and said it would boost the island's tourist potential as "the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean".

They said the new mine would have killed up to 1.5 million of the estimated 50 million red crabs that inhabit the forest floor. Each year the crabs go into a breeding frenzy, turning roads and beaches into a crimson carpet as they scuttle from the rugged interior to the ocean and back again.

But the ruling has dismayed many of the 1,200 islanders, who now fear a mass exodus as 140 mine employees, their families and dependent businesses are forced to leave the tiny island in search of work.

"The economy of the island is the mine - there's nothing else," said Gordon Thomson, the head of the union of mineworkers.

"I think we could have done away with a few trees in order to keep this place going. I believe up to half the island will leave - there'll be nothing to keep them here."

advertisementThe descendants of indentured labourers brought to Christmas Island in the 19th Century, ethnic Chinese and Malays make up 80 per cent of the population.

A few might find jobs at the controversial, multi-million- pound refugee detention centre the Canberra government is building on the territory to stop asylum seekers reaching Australian soil.

Although phosphate mining turns virgin rainforest into a virtual moonscape, the pro-mining lobby argues that two thirds of Christmas Island is already protected as national park.

Sacrificing another 270 hectares - around two per cent of the island - would have been justified to save jobs, they argued.

"You have to weigh the environmental impact against the social impact," said Alfred Chong, the mine's manager.

"A lot of the older workers don't even speak English - they won't get new jobs in Australia. The community is going to be devastated."

But hundreds of other islanders, including the head of the chamber of commerce, are delighted at Canberra's decision and now hope to promote the rocky outcrop as a diving and bird watching destination.

"From a tourism point of view, cutting down rainforest is a death wish," said Linda Cash, the head of the tourist office, a modest wooden building in the port area known simply as Settlement.

"Instead we should be a niche tourism market, bringing in people from all over the world to see the crabs, the birds and our amazing marine life, like manta rays and whale sharks."

A tropical mélange of Chinese, Malay and European cultures, the island's incense-scented Buddhist temples, bright green mosque and Malay kampong, or village, make it probably the least Australian place in the country.

Transferred from British to Australian rule in 1958, reminders of the colonial era still linger.

A mouldering club is slowly being reclaimed by the jungle and until a decade ago the Administrator - the Queen's representative - lived in a grand white mansion.

The house, now empty, still bears a wooden plaque commemorating the act of possession by the commander of HMS Imperieuse, in the name of "Her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India", in June 1888.