elsslots:
The scientists who visit Surtsey today carefully monitor their shoe soles and trouser cuffs to make sure they're not bringing in new species, but keeping Earth's newest ecosystem clean requires endless vigilance."
This sort of thing is perfectly normal even for tourists when visiting sites where avoidance of inadvertent ingress of non-native biota is important - but I am not sure about "Shoe covers" - they would be pretty useless I would have thought!!
When visiting South Georgia we had to "vacuum" all our clothes , day sacks etc etc before arriving to try to remove any seeds etc etc which might have been left on from excursions elsewhere (These "vacuuming" requirements had been introduced between our first and second visits in 2003 and 2007). And on all Antarctic landings (on both visits) Wellington boots have to be plunged into disinfected water ( tubs are provided for the purpose!) and scrubbed before and after each visit. Some of it of course is about not spreading pathogens already in the area as well as not bringing in something from another continent - you are going to walk in a lot of bird/animal faeces - if there IS some infection on island A there is a need to try to avoid it being taken to island B!
The biosecurity rules for visiting
Macquarie Island are very similar (but no "special" shoes!) -
https://www.parks.tas.gov.au/file.aspx?id=43825How really effective all this might be is another matter!
I guess we could consider a "Connection" regarding "WHS with personal Biosecurity rules for tourists" But we would need to exclude "WHS which can't be visited" since that would double count - so Surtsey wouldn't be included! And also exclude the "normal" simple rules of not leaving rubbish etc etc as well as overall "country" rules - most countries have general restrictions on import of foods/fruits etc. I would specify "personal" since many sites have rules for ships.
NZ Subantarctic Islands have similar rules to those of Macquarie (
https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/southland/places/subantarct ic-islands/minimum-impact-code/ )
Heard and Macdonald Islands makes a 3rd for the Connection -
http://heardisland.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/148150/HIMI_Manageme nt_Plan_2014_2024_upload.pdfProbably best to require a link to the specific rules for each WHS?? I would have thought that all are going to be Islands?
I don't remember any such rules for the Galapagos, Aldabra or Inaccessible Island. - but they may have been introduced since we visited - though these are the Galapagos Isldand rules and wouldn't IMO "meet" the "personal Biosecurity" connection standards -
https://www.galapagos.org/travel/travel/park-rules/