Restoring vulnerable habitat and ensuring sustainable use on Klein Bonaire

Klein Bonaire is a small, uninhabited island off the western coast of Bonaire. With visitor numbers rising rapidly, the fragile ecosystems of beaches, coral reefs, and dry tropical forests are under increasing pressure, making sustainable management more important than ever.

Header photo: Klein Bonaire © STINAPA

Stichting Nationale Parken Bonaire (STINAPA) manages both Klein Bonaire and the surrounding Marine Park. With support from Bestlife2030, STINAPA is restoring vulnerable habitats and improving sustainable use on Klein Bonaire in order to improve the island’s climate resilience. Jessica Johnson, project coordinator at STINAPA, is leading efforts to protect and restore the island’s biodiversity while ensuring that visitors can enjoy Klein Bonaire responsibly. 

STINAPA’s role

STINAPA has managed the Island since 1999, but until recently, there has been little active management. As visitor numbers rise, so does the negative impact on nature. To address this, STINAPA has been working on improving management through a number of initiatives. Their project focuses on increasing ranger support by increasing ranger presence on busy days and implementing rotation schedules, but also on conducting a study to help understand the Island’s ecological thresholds. At the same time, it aims to enhance the visitor experience by promoting sustainable tourism and improving walking trails, signage and access to popular diving spots, like No Name Beach.  

Another key component of the project is ecological restoration. STINAPA hosts re-wilding events to restore natural habitats on Klein Bonaire and enhance the island’s ecological resilience. In addition, they organise stakeholder meetings and workshops with the local community, conservation partners, and volunteers to ensure that they are trained, informed, and able to manage and monitor ecological restoration measures independently. Through these combined efforts, STINAPA hopes to promote the sustainable use of Klein Bonaire while still allowing visitors to enjoy the island. 

The current project is a spin-off of another successful initiative on the east coast of Bonaire, Lac Bay. “We decided to apply this approach to other parts of the marine park. We know what to do and what to expect, which allows us to be more efficient with our time,” Johnson explains. 

Limits of Acceptable Change study

As tourism and its impact on the small island increases, it becomes necessary to carefully manage these developments. STINAPA wants to gain a better understanding of how the landscape of Klein Bonaire functions and how the tourists interact with its environment. To achieve this, the organisation plans on conducting a Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) study, a tool to help determine the acceptable impact of tourists on Klein Bonaire. The LAC model helps determine which impacts from activities such as tourism are acceptable and guides managers on how to keep these impacts under control. 

Through this study, STINAPA aims to define the conditions it wishes to maintain on Klein Bonaire and to establish how much environmental change can be tolerated without compromising the island’s ecological health. ‘Tourism is growing rapidly, and this study would be an important tool to help us understand the island’s ecological thresholds and guide future management decisions,’ says Johnson.  

Rewilding benefits nature conservation goals and visitor experience

With Klein Bonaire being a tourist attraction, it can sometimes be challenging to focus on nature conservation goals. Johnson agrees, stating, ‘The best thing for nature is to tell people they can’t come to the Island. However, it is a tourist site, so we can’t do that. In order to still improve the state of nature on the island, STINAPA has come up with measures that have a positive impact on both nature and the visitor experience. For example, through their rewilding events. 

Through volunteer events, STINAPA plants tree species that do well in the harsh climate of Klein Bonaire. But they also work with different watering strategies. ‘If possible, we plant the trees close to freshwater wells, as they are more likely to survive there. If that is not an option, we use a water dripping method and gels that decompose while maintaining moisture in the first few years,’ says Johnson. These trees will ultimately make the island more climate resilient, but also improve the user experience. ‘The more trees there are, the less people will shove their umbrellas in the sand.’ 

Future prospects

Looking ahead, the project on Klein Bonaire is not only an investment in the island itself, but also in the broader resilience of Bonaire and the Caribbean Netherlands. By demonstrating how conservation and sustainable use can go hand in hand, STINAPA’s work on Klein Bonaire can serve as an example for other small islands facing similar pressures. 

The BESTLIFE2030 programme

This project is part of the BESTLIFE2030 programme. It is funded by the EU LIFE-programme, a European environmental and climate action grant programme. BESTLIFE 2030 provides funding for projects that work on nature conservation and restoration in overseas countries and territories of the European Union to stop and reverse global biodiversity loss. 

IUCN NL is the focal point for Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Maarten. These islands have a high biodiversity, but are among the places that are the most vulnerable to climate change and environmental pressures.