Overwhelmed By Tourists, Easter Island Crumbles

EASTER ISLAND, Chile June 24, 2008 -- It's earth's most-remote inhabited land, a South Pacific speck of volcanic rock so isolated the locals call it "Te Pito O Te Henua," or "The Navel of the World."

But Easter Island is a bellybutton experiencing a tourist boom — and some are worried the onslaught of outsiders could take a toll on the very things they come to see, the gigantic stone heads known as Moais.

"More tourism, more deterioration. More visitors, more loss," said Susana Nahoe, an archaeologist who was a liaison between Chile's National Tourism Service and the island's scientific community before leaving the post two years ago, citing "differences in values."

"We are at the point now where, either we protect what we have or we lose it," she said.

Moais (pronounced Moe-Eyes) already face a host of natural enemies. Sun, surf, winds and humidity are eating at their features. Many have been beset by blights, lichen and moss. Erosion tears away the Ahus, ceremonial platforms of dirt and stone on which they sit, and even is slowly claiming the island's porous edges.

Nahoe said most tourists are careful not to harm Moais, but some unknowingly walk or climb on them, exacerbating natural deterioration. Others deface them deliberately, including a Finnish tourist who was fined $17,000 after hacking an ear lobe off a statue in March.

What can be done to better-protect Moais is difficult to answer. But then, so much about this place raises beguiling questions. Why were the heads built? How were they lugged all over the island? What happened to their eyes? And what catastrophe befell civilization, causing people to suddenly stop making the Moai and topple the ones they'd completed?

Settlers arrived from the Marquesas Islands to the north between 400 and 600. Society flourished until about 1680 and Moais probably were constructed to honor tribal leaders. But resources became scarce as the population grew. When islanders cut down all the trees, tribal warfare erupted, leading to cannibalism and the pulling down of the Moai.

The island's name comes from Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen who arrived on Easter Sunday in 1722. It's Chilean territory, though the country's mainland lies 2,237 miles to the east.

At 10 by 15 miles, Easter Island is roughly three times the size of Manhattan. In 1967, Chile's Lan Airlines began using it as a refueling stop en route to Tahiti. Tourists began arriving en masse 20 years later, when a 2-mile runway was built as an alternate landing site for the U.S. space shuttle.