Story: Conservation
Episode: 3
Presenter: Trevor Cochrane
Air Date: 24th December, 2022

Trevor learns all about the important conservation rules and tourist caps put in place to protects the island’s delicate ecosystem.

• Ian Hutton is a naturalist, museum curator and director of Lord Howe Nature Tours.
• With a population of only 380 people and a visitor cap of just 400 per night Lord Howe Island is a sanctuary protected from human activities.
• As a visitor you can contribute to the island’s conservation by adhering to import rules, and by cleaning your walking shoes before travelling, and at shoe scrub bays at walking tracks.
• Ian Hutton arrived on Lord Howe Island in 1980 as a young biologist and budding naturalist, having accepted a posting as a weather observer for the Bureau of Meteorology.
• Over the next forty years, he has explored and documented the island’s diverse habitats, marine life, plants, birds, weather patterns and geology
• The island is a narrow volcanic strip surrounded by several small, environmentally sensitive islets. The island is a remnant of a long-extinct shield volcano, dating back millions of years.
• The eradication of roughly 150,000 rats were eliminated in 2019. Since then, seedlings, beetles, snails, and bird populations have increased.
• Thought to be extinct by 1920 the Lord Howe Island Stick insect or Phasmid was rediscovered in 2001 and since then Melbourne Zoo have been successfully breeding them to later reintroduce to the island.
• Plastics on the Island pose a real threat to the fragile environment with an increasing number of dead chickens being found on the island with one having over 200 small pieces of plastic in its digestive system.

For more information:
www.lordhoweisland.info