By KAZUYUKI ITO/ Staff Writer
April 27, 2020 at 07:00 JST
TAKETOMI, Okinawa Prefecture--Officials on this islet need more visitors like Akira Fukushima to promote a struggling environmental protection program.
Fukushima, a 26-year-old company employee from Hokkaido, bought a 300-yen ($2.75) ticket from an access-fee vending machine at a port to enter Taketomijima island.
The system, the first of its kind in Japan, uses the collected fees for environment preservation activities, such as buying up land to prevent redevelopment into resort areas, planting trees and picking trash off the beaches.
Fukushima was among a crowd of sightseers who had arrived on a ferry from nearby Ishigakijima island in mid-March.
While Fukushima used the ticket machine, most of the other tourists just passed by without paying the access charge.
“I want the fund to be used to protect the beautiful ocean and townscape,” Fukushima said.
Visitors are expected to each pay 300 yen at vending machines set up at the ports on Taketomijima and Ishigakijima, in addition to the ferry fare. The contributions, however, are not mandatory, and sightseers are not asked if they have purchased the tickets.
Between September last year, when the system was introduced, and February, 25,000, or only 10 percent, of the 240,000 visitors to Taketomijima paid the fee.
Officials on the isle plan to raise awareness of the mechanism.
Taketomijima is popular among tourists for its scenery, traditional landscape lined with houses with red tiled roofs typical of Okinawa, and buffalo-drawn carriage rides.
As the sightseer numbers increased, islanders grew troubled by such issues as resort hotel construction, trash left lying around and a decline in the local agricultural industry.
When the annual tourist number topped 500,000 for the first time in 2014, residents decided at a meeting to make an “island-wide move” to preserve Taketomijima’s scenery.
In line with the local natural property law introduced the same year, Taketomi became the first municipality in Japan to solicit entry fees to cover costs for environment protection.
The Taketomijima Regional Foundation was established in May last year and is responsible for gathering the donations. The collected fees have enabled foundation staff and residents to jointly use an abandoned field to grow foxtail millet, potatoes and other crops. They have also used the contributions to plant Garcinia seedlings for a windbreak and clean up waste from a beach.
They are also looking to buy back areas sold during Japan’s late-1980s asset-inflated economic boom with the aim of preventing environmentally destructive development.
To improve the rate of contributions, souvenir stores and inns started calling on shoppers and guests to make donations in February.
“I want to preserve the landscape and life of Taketomi that our ancestors have conserved,” said Shinya Sakka, 54, a staff member of the foundation. “We will make efforts so all tourists will join in the program.”
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A tourist pays an access fee at the vending machine at a port on Ishigakijima island in Okinawa Prefecture before visiting Taketomijima island on March 11. (Kazuyuki Ito)
