Easter Island Statues Are Being Threatened By Nose-Picking Selfie-Seekers

Though geographically tiny at just 64 square miles, Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is home to a rich a history that's been attracting visitors for centuries. Now, one of the top experts on the island warns that inappropriate behavior from tourists could harm the ancient site, HuffPost reports.

Jo Anne Van Tilburg is an archaeologist who first visited Rapa Nui in the early 1980s. Her team has studied the Easter Island heads (known as moai) up close and uncovered the bodies buried beneath them, revealing that the full moai statues are actually up to 33 feet tall.

As Van Tilburg shared in a recent interview on 60 Minutes, a lot has changed since she first set foot on the island. In the early 1980s, Easter Island received about 2500 visitors a year; in 2018, 150,000 tourists flocked there to see the mysterious artifacts. That many annual visitors wouldn't be a lot for some destinations, but on Rapa Nui, an island with a permanent population of 5700 that relies on a generator for power and a limited water supply, those numbers can be devastating.

To make matters worse, many guests act in disrespectful ways when they arrive. According to Van Tilburg, it's not unusual to see tourists illegally climbing on top of the statues and pretending to pick their noses for selfies. "I am troubled by the lack of genuine tourist interest in the island and its people," Van Tillburg said. "There is a lack of genuine appreciation for the Rapa Nui past.”

The island's scarce resources and delicate ecosystem have long been a problem for the people who live there. This may have even led to the site's iconic statues: A recently published study posits that the moai were positioned in certain spots to mark precious sources of fresh water.