Is the East National Park Really Protected During Excursions?
Saona Island and Catalina Island are two of the most visited day-trip destinations in the Dominican Republic, and both sit inside the same protected area: Parque Nacional del Este, the East National Park. Thousands of visitors pass through its waters and beaches every week during high season, which raises a fair question for anyone paying attention to where their tourist dollar goes and what kind of impact a day trip actually has: is this park genuinely protected once tour boats and excursion groups are involved, or does “protected” mostly apply on paper?
What Parque Nacional del Este Actually Protects
Established in 1975, Parque Nacional del Este covers roughly 310 square kilometers of land and marine territory along the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, including Saona Island, the smaller Catalinita Island, a stretch of mainland dry forest, and Catalina Island a short distance to the west. It’s one of the largest protected areas in the country and one of the most ecologically varied, combining dry tropical forest, mangrove systems, coastal lagoons, and coral reef formations along its marine boundary.
The park falls under the authority of the Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources), which sets the regulatory framework — permitted activities, protected species, and restrictions on extraction or development — under the country’s general environmental law, Ley 64-00. In principle, this places Saona and Catalina under real legal protection, not just a designation used for marketing purposes.
Protection of the East National Park: What to Know
The regulatory framework covers several categories of protection that directly intersect with tourism activity in the park:
- Marine life and reef systems. Coral reefs, fish populations, and marine mammals within park boundaries are protected from disturbance, damage, or removal. This is the same framework that prohibits taking coral fragments, shells, or sand from Saona’s beaches — a rule that applies regardless of how casually it might be treated on the ground.
- Terrestrial wildlife. The dry forest covering much of Saona Island’s interior hosts species found in few other parts of the country, including several bird species and the rhinoceros iguana, a protected reptile native to Hispaniola. Disturbing habitats or removing wildlife is prohibited under the same law.
- Designated zones. Like most marine parks of this kind, Parque Nacional del Este divides its territory into zones with different levels of restriction — some open to regulated tourism, others reserved for research or left largely undisturbed. The natural pool and the main beaches used by excursion boats fall within the zones designated for public access.
- Operator permits. Tour operators running excursions into the park are generally required to hold appropriate permits and operate within designated routes and mooring areas, rather than navigating or anchoring wherever convenient.
On paper, this is a fairly comprehensive framework. Whether it translates into consistent practice once dozens of boats are moving through the same stretch of coastline on a busy day is a separate question.
Where the Gap Between Rules and Reality Tends to Show Up
Like most heavily visited marine parks worldwide — from Thailand’s Similan Islands to parts of the Great Barrier Reef — the honest answer is that enforcement capacity hasn’t always kept pace with visitor volume. A few recurring challenges are documented across Caribbean marine parks generally, Parque Nacional del Este included:
- Anchor damage. Boats anchoring directly on coral rather than using fixed mooring buoys can damage reef structures over time, a problem common to many reef destinations regardless of formal protections.
- Waste management at scale. A large number of daily visitors generates significant waste, and consistent removal of that waste — food packaging, plastic bottles, cigarette butts — from a remote island depends heavily on each operator’s own practices, since the park authority’s on-site enforcement staff is limited relative to visitor numbers.
- Wildlife handling. Starfish in the natural pool are a well-known example: officially, they’re meant to stay in the water, but the sheer number of visitors handling them for photos each day puts informal pressure on a rule that’s easy to state and harder to enforce moment to moment.
- Boat traffic and noise. During peak season, the volume of catamarans, speedboats, and private charters converging on the same beaches and snorkeling spots creates a level of activity that’s difficult to reconcile with the quieter, lower-impact vision typically associated with a protected area.
None of this means the park’s protections are meaningless — the designation still limits large-scale development, industrial activity, and permanent construction that would otherwise be possible on land this scenic. But day-to-day environmental outcomes on a beach visited by thousands of people weekly depend heavily on what individual operators actually do, not just on what the law says.
What Responsible Practice Looks Like for an Operator
Given that gap, the operators who make a visible difference tend to share a few concrete habits rather than general claims:
- Briefing guests explicitly on the no-touch, no-take rules for coral, shells, sand, and marine life before reaching the island, rather than assuming visitors already know.
- Using designated mooring points instead of dropping anchor freely near reef areas.
- Removing all waste generated during the excursion rather than leaving anything behind on the island.
- Keeping group sizes and boat movement within what the park’s infrastructure — its beaches, walkways, and the natural pool — can reasonably absorb without additional strain.
These aren’t extraordinary measures; they’re closer to a baseline of good practice for operating inside a marine protected area. The difference in outcomes between operators who apply them consistently and those who don’t is part of why some island beaches show visibly more strain than others after a decade of tourism growth.
What Quetzal Puts in Place
For Quetzal Excursions’ own trips to Saona, guests are briefed on park rules before disembarking — including the restriction on taking sand, shells, or coral, and on handling starfish only briefly before returning them to the water — consistent with the broader park regulations described above. Beyond this point, more specific details of Quetzal’s own operational practices around mooring, waste handling, or group management inside the park aren’t confirmed in the official sources available for this article, and shouldn’t be assumed rather than verified directly with the operator.
Final Thoughts
Parque Nacional del Este is a real protected area with a real legal framework behind it, not just a label attached to a scenic destination — but like most heavily visited marine parks, the distance between what the law protects and what actually happens on a crowded beach depends a great deal on enforcement capacity and on individual operators’ own practices. Saona and Catalina’s long-term condition will likely be shaped less by the park’s designation itself than by whether the operators bringing thousands of visitors there each week keep treating that protection as something to apply, not just something to mention.
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Based in Bayahibe, Quetzal Excursions is a local agency specialized in small-group sea trips to Saona, Catalina, and the most beautiful hidden gems of the Dominican Republic. We focus on comfort, safety, and authenticity, aboard high-end boats with a professional crew.
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