Tougher times for Christmas Island?
A decision from an Australian court would protect the Indian Ocean island's wildlife, but could ruin its economy.
from the August 1, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
An endangered cultural mix
The island's incense-scented Buddhist temples, green mosque, and Malay kampong, or village, make this Australian-owned speck of rock the least Australian place imaginable.
More than three-quarters of Christmas Island's inhabitants are ethnic Chinese and Malays. They are the descendants of indentured servants brought in by the British from China and Southeast Asia in the late 19th century.
Almost all the mine employees are ethnic Chinese, while the Malays run the island's port and the phosphate-loading docks.
Jimmy Yeow came to Christmas Island from Malacca, Malaysia, 37 years ago and has worked in the mine ever since. "It's crazy to close down the mine just because of a few bats. I've never even seen the ... things anyway," he says.
The head of the miners' union, Gordon Thomson, says two-thirds of Christmas Island is already protected as a national park.
Even though phosphate mining turns virgin rain forest into a virtual moonscape where nothing but scrub will grow, sacrificing 670 acres of forest – 2 percent of the island's land mass – would have been justified in order to maintain the population, he argues.
"The community will now slowly disintegrate," Mr. Thomson says in his office in Poon San. "We are already seeing some Chinese and Malay families move to Perth," the capital of the Territory of Western Australia.
A victory for conservationists
But many other islanders have welcomed the mining ban and hailed it as a victory for conservationists.
They say the new mine would have killed tens of thousands of the 60 million red land crabs for which the island is best known.
The crabs – handsome scarlet creatures – are everywhere on Christmas Island: in the forest, on the roads and beaches, in people's homes and gardens, even in the public toilets on the sea front, skittering in and out of the cubicles.
Each year they go into a breeding frenzy, turning the island into a moving carpet of crimson as they scuttle from the forest to the sea and back again.
It has been described as one of the greatest wildlife migration spectacles on the planet and led British naturalist Sir David Attenborough to dub the island the "kingdom of the crabs."
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