Shifting Baselines

Well, I'm back in the Galapagos Islands for a couple weeks. The last time I was here was May 2007 and a lot has happened in the last 10 months (i.e., humans, including myself, continue to stamp their footprints all over this delicate archipelago). First off, Galapagos tourism continues to grow like a cancer. In the early 1980s fewer than 15,000 tourists visited Galapagos. Last year, 160,000 visitors came to the islands.

It's really hard to get a handle on tourism given how lucrative it is. Just two weeks ago, the head of the Galapagos National Park was removed from power after a two year term. Rumor has it, she had denied a powerful tourism operator permission to operate another boat in the islands. The boat owner made a few phone calls and voila. She was removed from power and a couple days later, a new tourist tourist boat found harbor and dollars in Galapagos waters.

In the absence of leadership, the National Park of Galapagos just traded some land in town for land up in the highlands. The land in town will go to a housing development of roughly 80 homes to satiate the swelling resident population. There is rumor the trade was good in terms of biodiversity but most Galapagos residents concerned about conservation worry about the dangerous precedent the trade sets.

The inability to control tourism and immigration to Galapagos is what led a UNESCO mission last year to declare that the Galapagos' status as a World Heritage Site is in jeopardy.

There has also been drama related to the marine environment. Sea Shepherd's Sean O'Hearn has fled Galapagos with his family as he had received numerous death threats from Ecuador's shark mafia after a series of Sea Shepherd-led busts last year. Sean is hiding out in Chile until things simmer down, which could be never.

And who could forget the senseless massacre of 53 Galapagos sea lions earlier this year? Still no headway on that case.

Here is some good news, though. The award-winning BBC series on Galapagos released last year has now been translated into Spanish and is being sold in the islands. Also, I just visited Peter and Rosemary Grant who continue their 30+ years of burly field work studying the finches of Daphne Island. Furthermore, dear friends have an idyllic sustainable farm in the highlands where they are replanting endemic plant species, collecting rainwater, and growing organic coffee that they sell locally (more on that soon). And they work for Conservation International and WWF, so they're practicing what they preach!

Off now to the quaint slow-paced life on the island of Isabela and will return next week. In the meanwhile, Josh has plenty to keep shifting baselines busy...