Why only 400 people at a time can visit this paradise island

By Emily Blumenthal, CNN

(CNN) — Lord Howe Island has the look of a destination ripe for overtourism, with verdant mountaintops, pristine white-sand beaches and clear-blue waters teeming with colorful fish.

Yet on this island of around 400 people, located 372 miles off the east coast of mainland Australia, the beaches are empty. The only sounds on a hike through its rainforests and mountains come from the wildlife.

“It’s what is not here that provides that experience – that is why it’s so unique,” said Lisa Makiiti, a sixth-generation islander who runs the boutique accommodation Bowker Beach House. There’s “value of having somewhere in the world that works in the reverse to every other tourist destination. It’s not bigger and better and more and more.”

The secret to that unspoiled landscape is a tactic used in very few other places: limiting the number of tourists who can visit at all.

For over 40 years, Lord Howe has implemented a cap of 400 tourists at a time by fixing the number of beds available to visitors. This was to protect Lord Howe’s many unique endemic species, which helped the island earn recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1982.

Although the number was arbitrary, maintaining it has minimized environmental impacts and created a “one-for-one visitor to local” experience, said Darcelle Matassoni, a sixth-generation islander who works for the Lord Howe Island Board, the island’s government.

Unsurprisingly, that means it’s difficult to get there; Makiiti says Bowker has bookings well into 2026. Airfares for a return trip to Sydney can run upwards of US$666, and in peak summer season, accommodation for two can range from US$200 to over US$3,000 per night.

‘Alien concept’

Those policies showcase a “united desire to make sure that nature comes out on top,” said Dean Hiscox, who runs Lord Howe Environmental Tours. More than 85% of the island is still covered in its native forest, and around 70% is in a Permanent Park Preserve, meaning all development is prohibited. The residential settlement covers 15%.

Visitors often wonder if there’s pressure for more development, but on Lord Howe, that’s an “alien concept,” Hiscox said. Even the local community is effectively capped because of rules on housing. Many residents are descended from original settlers who arrived in the 1800s.

“Those families that have been here for those five, six, seven generations have always recognized how special their lifestyle is here,” said Ian Hutton, a naturalist and photographer who has lived on the island since 1980. “There is that strong generational feeling of protecting their island.”

Nature like nowhere else in the world

Life on Lord Howe is “like living inside a David Attenborough documentary,” said Hutton, who is also the curator at the Lord Howe Island Museum, on his website.

Although it’s just seven miles long, the island is densely packed with plants and animals found nowhere else. The rainforests are filled with creeping plants, orchids and birds. Atop the summit of Mount Gower – one of the most popular hiking trails on Lord Howe – sits a rare, endangered cloud forest. The island’s most famous endemic export is seeds of the Kentia Palm, the world’s most popular palm to grow indoors.

On the coast, people can walk by nesting colonies of the Providence Petrel, a gray and white seabird with a slightly curved black beak that mainly breeds on Lord Howe. The birds will swoop down when called and are so friendly to humans that a person can pick them up.

Much of the allure is the proximity to nature. Beaches are just a few minutes’ walk or bike ride away from the guesthouses, making Lord Howe “the easiest holiday,” said Anthony Riddle, a sixth-generation islander who co-founded Lord Howe Island Brewing Company and Lord Howe Island Distilling Company.

“You’re only on a boat for five or 10 minutes, and you’re already out to the main reefline. If you try and do that on the Great Barrier Reef, you might be on a boat for three or four hours and still not see nearly as much as you get to see here,” Hiscox said.

Around 500 species of fish, as well as starfish, urchins and crabs, populate the world’s southernmost barrier reef right by the island, according to Hutton’s website. One of the best places for diving is Ball’s Pyramid, the world’s tallest sea stack, which sits 14 miles southeast of the main island and is surrounded by caves and waters abundant in rare sea creatures.

Like Lord Howe’s residents, those who visit care deeply about preserving the island’s natural world, Hiscox said. Tour guides always explain that tradition of sustainability to their guests, but they don’t have to do much to convince them of its importance.

“We just simply elaborate,” Hiscox said. “We tell the story about what is it that’s special about Lord Howe Island. You have a captive audience who are already tuned into that philosophy, and want to know about it. You’re talking to the converted.”

Many visitors take that passion a step further by participating in local conservation programs. The Island Board has implemented a paid weed eradication program, and Hutton runs weeding ecotours and citizen science campaigns.

Sniffer dogs

There are also strict biosecurity procedures to protect against invasive species. All imports and visitors are checked, including by sniffer dogs. At the beginning of walking tracks, there are stations for hikers to scrub their boots to stop the spread of fungus. It’s a level of intense conservation that blows people away from the moment they get off the airplane, Hutton said.

“The sniffer dogs check their bags and (visitors) find out that the dogs are not looking for marijuana, they’re just looking for rats and frogs,” Hutton said.

The island has carried out removals of introduced predatory feral pigs, goats and cats, and new domestic cats have been banned since 1982. Animals that were introduced to combat invasive species have also been removed.

The one recent point of contention has been a successful government initiative in 2019 to eradicate rats and mice, which were destroying native species. The initiative was widely supported, but the use of a chemical rodenticide and the regular property inspections upset some.

After the elimination of the rodents, many under-threat native species are now thriving. The Woodhen, a flightless bird that is one of the world’s rarest, almost went extinct but its numbers have increased tenfold since the eradication, Hutton said.

Despite efforts by the government and citizens to protect the island, many of its defining features are under threat from climate change. A long run of record-breaking air and ocean temperatures fueled by climate change and the natural El Nino phenomenon has caused several massive coral bleaching events and dieback in the cloud forest. The increasing frequency of severe weather events means their future survival is “in the lap of the gods,” Hiscox said.

An isolated history

Lord Howe is today just a two-hour plane ride from the mainland, but historically the island and its close-knit community have been isolated.

For decades, the only way to get there was by seaplane. These “flying boats” first began regular flights to Lord Howe just after the end of World War II, and from the 1950s onward ferried passengers back and forth from Sydney six times a week, according to the Australian National Maritime Museum. The journey took around three hours each way. For islanders, life during that time was slow and nonmaterialistic.

“There was no television, no internet, no telephones. We lived a completely unfettered and natural lifestyle. And pretty feral, I suspect, but safe feral,” said Makiiti.

“No shoes and everyone’s main priority was that you could swim, but we just roamed the island in complete freedom and were outside all the time fishing and swimming and just hanging out.”

After the government built an airstrip in the 1970s, use of the flying boats ceased, and “suddenly things speeded up a little bit,” Makiiti said. But in many ways life on Lord Howe today is unchanged. Residents keep their doors unlocked, and there is no mobile phone service outside of home Wi-Fi networks.

That isolation has bred challenges, but islanders have found unique ways to adapt. There is no secondary school, meaning all children must do distance education or attend boarding schools on the mainland. Buying anything takes a lot of thought because all imports, including food, must come on the fortnightly freight ship. The cost of living is triple that on the mainland – one apple costs US$2 and a liter of gas and a liter of milk each cost US$2.66, Riddle said.

Many islanders have partially offset those costs by farming and gardening – in the island’s subtropical climate, they can grow most anything from root vegetables to avocados, and have native botanicals like wild lemons. There’s also a bartering system.

“It’s quite a nice other aspect of a connected community, where you’re just sharing everything around and when you have too much of something, everybody benefits from that as well,” Matassoni said.

Sustainability in their DNA

Despite the challenges, residents feel lucky to live as they do – rejecting excess with a mentality that’s “all about reuse, reduce and look after,” Makiiti said. It’s a relaxed place where people spend their free time surfing, swimming and hiking, and most everyone gets around on bicycles.

Respect for the environment is “instilled in us from a very young age,” Matassoni said, “because we are stewards of that environment.” Residents and visitors alike “are very conscious of just a simple thing like not dropping an ice cream wrapper,” Hutton said.

Around 80% of the island’s electricity is powered by a community solar grid, Hutton said. Everyone is also required to sort their own waste and bring it to the island’s waste management facility. Anything that can’t be reused, composted or recycled gets turned into garden mulch.

“Nobody likes red tape but everybody understands that it’s all in aid of making sure that we get to keep the lifestyle we have, that we get to keep the natural environment the way it is, that we are all very lucky to be here,” Matassoni said.

Makiiti says Bowker Beach House pays attention to the little details – the toiletries and coffee cups are reusable, and they even send coffee pods back to Nespresso. The eggs laid by the beach house’s chickens go in reusable containers.

Islanders “always use the analogy less is more,” Riddle said. “The longer we can keep it more unique like this, the more unique we are in the world.”

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