By the time pilot Don Adams landed on Lady Elliot Island, a coral cay at the southern end of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, decades of commercial guano mining had reduced the place to something approaching a moonscape. The seabirds were largely gone, the vegetation had been stripped away, and even the roughly three feet of guano-rich soil that once supported it had disappeared.

By 1874, according to historical accounts , most of the 111-acre island’s endemic flora and seabird colonies had vanished, with introduced goats picking over whatever remained. Aside from its lighthouse, Lady Elliot was more or less abandoned.

Then came Adams. In 1969, the enterprising Queensland pilot set his sights on Lady Elliot, securing a tourism lease in exchange for building an airstrip. But Adams wasn’t merely looking to turn a barren patch of coral into a tourist destination.…