Due to their ever-increasing
popularity, the serene and exotic Galápagos Islands are at a
critical crossroads. And part of the solution lies within the
problem.
Six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador, the sun balances atop
the dark-blue Pacific, its honey-soft light spilling across tide
pools strewn with life. Here on Santiago Island, the salt air
vibrates with barkings, hootings, whistlings, cawings, great
belches, and snorts. Sea turtles rise in grottoes; sea lions loll
on the sand. Bright-orange Sally Lightfoot crabs scurry over the
dark rocks; marine iguanas lie languid and still; birds of every
imaginable variety surround me. It is unforgettable, this Eden
gloaming.
Make no mistake; the Galápagos remain a magical and otherworldly
place. As Charles Darwin observed, the islands are a living
experiment unlike any other. Scattered among 13 large islands, six
small islands, 42 islets, and innumerable rocks and pinnacles, you
have the Nature Channel on the fritz: a small bird, slightly larger
than a tennis ball, that plops on the backs of bigger birds, pecks
at them until they bleed, and then drinks their blood; the only
gull in the world that hunts at night. Beneath the water, marine
iguanas undulate gracefully with great powerful arcs, and penguins,
stout little barristers, rocket past, trailing silver bubbles and
blithely ignoring the fact that they reside at the equator. Nearly
half the archipelago's birds and insects, 32 percent of the plants,
and 90 percent of the reptiles exist nowhere else. Stand before the
tide pools of Santiago Island, and it's easy to believe you are
Charles Darwin himself.
That's the wondrous stuff. But Darwin's living experiment is at a
critical crossroads. A 1960s projection warned that no more than
12,000 tourists should visit the islands each year. But in 2000,
66,000 folks visited the Galápagos. And last year, that number
reached 109,000, with a continuing pressure to keep increasing the
boom. Mainland Ecuadoreans, seeing the better standard of living
enjoyed by their island countrymen as a result of tourism and
fishing, have flocked to the islands. In 1960, the population of
the Galápagos was 2,000. In 1998, there were 15,000 residents.
Today, there are close to 28,000 people living among the islands -
and they're raising all manner of problems, from trash to
overfishing. Introduced species - goats, rats, dogs, cats ... pick
what you like - raze native vegetation and gobble everything from
turtle eggs to iguanas. Fishing, legal and illegal, has decimated
species and segued into corruption and violence. A fishing frenzy
has seen the sea cucumber population destroyed, fishermen flocking
in from the mainland to harvest the cash cow of a slug, prized in
Asia as a table delicacy and an aphrodisiac in bedrooms. When
Galápagos National Park officials imposed restrictions on the sea
cucumber take, irate fishermen protested by killing 72 tortoises on
Isabela Island. Sharks, once gnat-thick in Galápagos waters, have
thinned appreciably - caught for their fins. A single boat, boarded
by Park Service personnel near Wolf Island, had more than 1,000
shark fins onboard.