Australia Students Explore Tourism and Biodiversity Conservation on Russell Island
Center for Rainforest Studies
Atherton Tablelands, Australia

Russell Island is an offshore island in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park that comprises a complex of rainforest, casuarina forest and tropical dune vegetation. From its location and biodiversity values stem an array of management issues including weed and exotic animal control and visitor management. With students up to speed on the Russell Island Management Plan, and keen to contribute, we got away from CRS at an unholy hour – but bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Our first day on the island was spent conducting reconnaissance missions in search of targeted weed species in the open and closed forest communities as well as establishing pitfall and cage traps for fauna surveys. Following a BBQ that rivaled any ‘Outback Steakhouse' we went spotlighting to document new records of gecko species for the island. Our second day entailed focused sampling to document and quantify weed populations on the island; the synthesis of this work will provide a direct contribution to the island's management plan. Park management agency representatives spoke to us regarding management of these island jewels and pointed us in the direction of some weed populations that they wanted ‘taken out'. The following morning we put all our physical effort into removing a small population of Leucaena leucocephala (coffee bush), a small but highly invasive and physically formidable woody weed that can interrupt forest regeneration cycles. Our efforts sampling fauna on the island will expand the management agency's species lists considerably. We were sad to pack up and hand over ‘our island' to other users of this fantastic resource, but left feeling that we had done some good, and left the island in a better condition than when we arrived.

In summary, the Russell Island trip provided an excellent example of tropical forest management where tourism and biodiversity conservation are sometimes competing and sometimes complimentary management drivers. Throw in some tropical beach lazing, snorkeling, searching for exotic fauna and a view to die for and the value of learning in the field is obvious. My personal highlight was over-hearing students say, “this is the best field trip ever.”  Jason Cummings, Ph.D, Faculty

Read reflections on the Russell Island expedition from SFS students currently in the field

Learn more about the SFS Australia program

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