Historical Stages of the Development of Insular Environmental Management in the Russian Far-East Seas

The article reviews the stages in the development of insular environmental management, as exemplified by three groups of islands in the Russian Far-East seas: the Commander and the Shantar Archipelagos and Moneron Island. It is established that the using the islands and the shifts in the types of nature management followed the same pattern: indigenous nature management with minimum anthropogenic pressure – predatory pioneer commercial nature management – complex industrial nature management – conservation-aimed nature management with the organization of a specially protected natural area on the island. The using the islands was metachronous (consecutively and asynchronous) and cyclical. The periods of intensive economic activity were succeeded by the periods of the lack of permanent population and reduction of the load; the mechanism of wave development and succession of phases of lower-amplitude cycles is manifested between and within stages, which reflects almost ubiquitously manifested (on varying scale) cyclic nature of the development of nature-economy system. It has been determined that economic activities on the islands are only cost-effective when the area is large, the degree of isolation is low, transportation costs are low, and there are unique and / or economically sought-after nature resources. The less isolated and larger the island and the higher its landscape diversity, the higher the cost-effectiveness of insular nature management. The conservation component of nature management increases proportionate to isolation index and the presence of zoogenic geosystems on an island. For each of the islands under study, the ultimate outcome of a long history of its using was creation of specially protected natural areas (SPNA), as insular ecosystems are distinguished for their unique nature, numerous rare plant and animal species (including endemic ones), and are popular sites for ecotourism. It is shown that creation of a multifunctional SPNA in a national or nature park format is one of the more optimal ways of using the islands’ natural resource potential since it allows combining different kinds of nature management.