Can tourism drive effective coral reef management? A modelling study.

ArielGreiner

University of Oxford

"Can tourism drive effective coral reef management? A modelling study."

Coral reefs are some of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet but also some of the most important, hosting upwards of 25% of marine biodiversity while also providing food and livelihood to almost 1 billion people. Coral reefs are also connected together into reef networks by coral larval dispersal, meaning that management or damage at one reef may have consequences for any reefs it is connected to. For this reason, coral reef management is of interest to many industries (e.g., fisheries, tourism) and governments. The potential impact of tourism in the context of coral reef management is unclear, as tourism is a source of damage for reefs but may also be a source of income that motivates conservation actors to keep reefs healthy for future tourists. Tourism groups also often focus on a subset of coral reefs, meaning that any management initiatives driven by tourism income would also only be focused on a subset of coral reefs in a reef network. We develop a socio-ecological model composed of a system of differential equations. This model represents a network of coral reefs visited by tourists to determine whether tourism income could help sustain a healthy network of coral reefs into the future. We explore this question under a variety of different tourism paradigms, management methods (coral restoration, fisheries management) and network types. Overall, we find that management funded by tourism can help counteract tourism damage, but is unable to save reefs that are unhealthy (low initial coral cover, high fishing). Management also has limited potential to help connected reefs in the network. This study demonstrates the limited effectiveness of tourism to drive coral reef conservation and instead encourages active investment in management methods that focus on the entire reef network.
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