Eco-paradise caught between development and the deep blue sea

By Dan Rivers

Tioman is a verdant jewel of an island, with a near legendry status among divers. You might not have heard of it, but you might have seen it.

Tioman's beaches were used as a filming location for the 1958 classic movie "South Pacific". The grandfather of scuba Jacques Cousteau also came here, rating its reefs and in the 1970s Time Magazine voted it among the top ten most beautiful islands in the world.

But now Tioman has reached a critical crossroads, according to those who have devoted their life to preserving its unique marine and jungle habitat.

Katie Yewdall runs Blue Ventures on the island, an eco-tourism company that offers volunteers the chance to leave the island in a better condition than they found it.

"Tioman is part of the coral triangle which extends from the Philippines, down to Papua New Guinea and across to this coast of Malaysia, where the coral reefs are some of the most highly diverse in the world," she says.

"There's something like 700 genera of coral in this area. Tourism has been here for thirty years but it's definitely growing. It's kind of at the point now where it can go in two directions it can either go down the very commercial road and become very much like neighboring countries like Thailand or it can choose to take a different direction and go towards more responsible tourism."

You only have to visit an island like Koh Samui in Thailand to realize why environmentalists on Tioman are so worried. Samui has been heavily developed with shopping malls, hundreds of hotels, vacation homes and heavy traffic on its tiny roads.

In 2009, Samui had 650,000 visitors last year, compared to less than 200,000 last year on Tioman.

But now the Malaysian federal government and local developers want to build a new airport on Tioman, superseding the tiny airstrip that currently allows only small propeller planes to perform a hair-raising landing between the mountains and the sea.

The new airport would allow much bigger jets to land and would open up the possibility that budget carriers could open routes here.

Local leaders, like Kamarulzaman bin Ismail say it's vital for the economy, but they are convinced they can still preserve Tioman's unique environment. He knows the reason tourists come here is for the pristine environment; ruining that could deter future visitors.

Dan Pedraza is a volunteer with Blue Ventures and is convinced that tourism and environmentalism can co-exist. His own personal journey represents just the sort of change in thinking he feels is necessary on Tioman. Dan used to be a Formula 1 engineer but opted out of the "Rat Race" to lead a greener life.

Read more...

Posted via email from