This chapter looks at the artist colony of St Ives in Cornwall through the ecological prism of the keystone species. We explore the town’s history from the time it was a fishing port and tin mining centre, to its heyday as an artist colony, and its subsequent life as a tourist destination. We see this transition as a process of ecological succession, and we see the artist as the keystone species of the town’s ecosystem. We then look at the impact Tate St Ives had on the town, noting that it drove a significant boom in tourism, but that it arguably affected St Ives as a community. We wonder whether the tourist might be viewed as an invasive species that created an imbalanced biome of the ecosystem. We conclude that careful ecosystem stewardship provides towns as much as ecosystems with sustainability and resilience.