'Snot on! Easter Island statue nose-picking photos upset local conservationists

Rapa Nui residents are picking tourists out over irresponsible photos: The Moai Ko te Riku. Photo / Getty Images

The mysterious Easter Island is becoming increasingly accessible, with the ancient stone sculptures a draw for 100,000 annual visitors.

While the romance of the mysterious stone heads have made it a dream location for many travellers, one archaeologist is not enamored by the influx of badly behaved tourists. It seems the tactile tourists can't keep their hands off the Rapa Nui heads.

Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project and member of UCLA, has claimed a crude new craze is threatening the future of the historic world heritage site.

Tourists can't keep their hands off the Rapa Nui heads. Photo / Instagram.com

Visitors to Rapa Nui National Park, the site of 900 statues, have begun posing for the same photo op pretending to pick the giant sculptures' noses.

"Because of the ubiquitous nature of photography in our community, people take the same picture repeatedly. Once one person picks a nose of the moai [sculptures], you can be sure there will be multiple thousands (of photos) because people are lemmings," Ms Van Tilburg told TravelPulse.

Beyond the blatant disrespect for the artefacts, the pictures are a cause of wear and tear to the statues. There is a danger that eventually the mysterious statues that outlasted their original sculptors might eventually become victims of overtourism.

'People are lemmings,' Archaeologists have condemned the 'nose picking' photos. Photo / Instagram.com

The stone heads, known as moai, were recently given new protections by the park. Visitors are given a strict set of rules and a path to follow around the Unesco heritage park.
However, this has not stopped defiant tourists from sticking their fingers up the noses of the statues.

The preservation of the statues is a huge source of pride for the island, which is a territory of Chile.

New rules and visitor visas of 30 days have been introduced to protect the statues. Photo / Instagram.com

To protect the statues the Chile has restricted visitor visas to 30 days for anyone who is not of Rapa Nui descent. In spite of the island's remote location – 322km off the coast of Chile – overtourism is still a big concern. Local islanders are outnumbered by annual visitors 13 to 1, according to Travel+Leisure.

The heads are still a mystery to historians, and damage to the statues risks losing any possibility of uncovering the secrets of the original sculptors and the island civilisation.