That Might Not Be a Good Thing
“The archipelago is a little world within itself,” a young Charles Darwin mused in his London study in 1839. Four years earlier, the aspiring naturalist had spent five weeks on the Galápagos Islands, some 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. So taken by the “extreme tameness” of the species he encountered, he wasn’t an ideal visitor by today’s standards: He hopped on the backs of giant tortoises and “pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree” with the muzzle of a gun.
These days, that “little world” is brand-name nature, drawing an increasing number of visitors from around the world to see, among other creatures, blue-footed boobies, marine iguanas that swim alongside equatorial penguins, and the giant tortoises for which the islands are named. In 2017, 241,800 people visited the islands, according to the Observatorio de Turismo de Galápagos, up from 173,419 a decade earlier.
Much of the growth — more than 90 percent from 2007 to 2016 — is from land-based tourism: visitors who fly into airports on the islands of Baltra and San Cristóbal, check into hotels and take à la carte tours that are considerably cheaper than the expensive cruises that traditionally are how most visitors have seen the islands. With round-trip flights from Quito costing as little as $400 or so, and hostel accommodations starting at $20 a night, the Galápagos Islands are no longer just for upscale travelers.
For the Galápagos National Park, which uses a portion of the $100 fee that visitors are required to pay ($6 for Ecuadoreans) to oversee the 97 percent of the islands that hasn’t been settled by humans, land-based tourism offers much-needed funds. But that doesn’t mean conservation groups — including Unesco, which lists tourism growth as one of the primary threats to the islands — aren’t alarmed by the lack of an enforced cap on land-based visitors. (Cruise passengers, on the other hand, are limited by the space available on expedition ships; last year, there were some 70 ships with room for about 1,700 passengers.) More people on the islands means more pressure on existing infrastructure, encroachment on animal habitats and a heightened risk of introducing invasive plant and animal species.
“It is simply not sustainable to have never-ending growth in land-based tourism in this fragile environment,” said Jim Lutz, the president of the International Galápagos Tour Operators Association, who expressed the same sentiment in a letter to Ecuador’s tourism minister last February.
On a recent visit to the islands, I observed land-based tourism in action, and spoke to naturalists, guides and others about the effects of the travel boom, which, along with climate change, illegal — and legal — fishing and other threats, make the Galápagos a microcosm of conservation’s modern challenges.
On The Ground
Along with more visitors, the islands’ permanent population (now about 30,000) has also swelled. About half of those residents — many from mainland Ecuador who were drawn here by the tourism business — are in Puerto Ayora, on the island of Santa Cruz.
In some ways, the town seems like any other tropical locale, with coffee shops, cafes and stores selling T-shirts; there is even a bit of a party scene when the sun goes down.
On an overcast Friday night in Puerto Ayora, I sat with Ulf Torsten Hardter, an environmental manager turned guide, on the patio of OMG Galápagos, a cafe with a life-size statue of Darwin sporting a Santa Claus-like beard, popular with the selfie set.
“The problem is that the islands lack basic infrastructure like waste, energy, water,” Mr. Hardter said over an iguana-branded I.P.A. As we talked, the misty rain called garúa started, and one of Darwin’s finches scavenged from my unfinished plate.
by Adam Popescu, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Josh Haner/The New York Times
“The archipelago is a little world within itself,” a young Charles Darwin mused in his London study in 1839. Four years earlier, the aspiring naturalist had spent five weeks on the Galápagos Islands, some 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. So taken by the “extreme tameness” of the species he encountered, he wasn’t an ideal visitor by today’s standards: He hopped on the backs of giant tortoises and “pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree” with the muzzle of a gun.
These days, that “little world” is brand-name nature, drawing an increasing number of visitors from around the world to see, among other creatures, blue-footed boobies, marine iguanas that swim alongside equatorial penguins, and the giant tortoises for which the islands are named. In 2017, 241,800 people visited the islands, according to the Observatorio de Turismo de Galápagos, up from 173,419 a decade earlier.
Much of the growth — more than 90 percent from 2007 to 2016 — is from land-based tourism: visitors who fly into airports on the islands of Baltra and San Cristóbal, check into hotels and take à la carte tours that are considerably cheaper than the expensive cruises that traditionally are how most visitors have seen the islands. With round-trip flights from Quito costing as little as $400 or so, and hostel accommodations starting at $20 a night, the Galápagos Islands are no longer just for upscale travelers.For the Galápagos National Park, which uses a portion of the $100 fee that visitors are required to pay ($6 for Ecuadoreans) to oversee the 97 percent of the islands that hasn’t been settled by humans, land-based tourism offers much-needed funds. But that doesn’t mean conservation groups — including Unesco, which lists tourism growth as one of the primary threats to the islands — aren’t alarmed by the lack of an enforced cap on land-based visitors. (Cruise passengers, on the other hand, are limited by the space available on expedition ships; last year, there were some 70 ships with room for about 1,700 passengers.) More people on the islands means more pressure on existing infrastructure, encroachment on animal habitats and a heightened risk of introducing invasive plant and animal species.
“It is simply not sustainable to have never-ending growth in land-based tourism in this fragile environment,” said Jim Lutz, the president of the International Galápagos Tour Operators Association, who expressed the same sentiment in a letter to Ecuador’s tourism minister last February.
On a recent visit to the islands, I observed land-based tourism in action, and spoke to naturalists, guides and others about the effects of the travel boom, which, along with climate change, illegal — and legal — fishing and other threats, make the Galápagos a microcosm of conservation’s modern challenges.
On The Ground
Along with more visitors, the islands’ permanent population (now about 30,000) has also swelled. About half of those residents — many from mainland Ecuador who were drawn here by the tourism business — are in Puerto Ayora, on the island of Santa Cruz.
In some ways, the town seems like any other tropical locale, with coffee shops, cafes and stores selling T-shirts; there is even a bit of a party scene when the sun goes down.
On an overcast Friday night in Puerto Ayora, I sat with Ulf Torsten Hardter, an environmental manager turned guide, on the patio of OMG Galápagos, a cafe with a life-size statue of Darwin sporting a Santa Claus-like beard, popular with the selfie set.
“The problem is that the islands lack basic infrastructure like waste, energy, water,” Mr. Hardter said over an iguana-branded I.P.A. As we talked, the misty rain called garúa started, and one of Darwin’s finches scavenged from my unfinished plate.
by Adam Popescu, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Josh Haner/The New York Times
