Conservation-Led

46 islands with a documented programme rather than a view of nature. The register separated this from Wilderness after discovering that its own data treated them as one word: every wild island was marked conservation and every conservation island wild, which meant neither tag said anything.

The evidence sits in the card. Coral nurseries with counts, researchers resident on the island, rangers on the payroll, species work that produces published papers. Where the card cannot show one of those, the island is Wilderness and no more — undeveloped ground is a condition, not an achievement.

58 islands are wild here; 46 are conservation-led. The gap between those numbers is the honest measure of how often a beautiful island is simply a beautiful island.

Not for travellers who read a programme as an obligation. On several of these islands guests are asked to participate, snorkel with a survey slate, or accept that a beach is closed in nesting season.