Team of Veterinarians Prepare Hybrid Tortoises for Release on Pinta Island in 2010
In November 2009, a group of veterinarians, working with the Galapagos National Park (GNP), prepared 39 hybrid tortoises slated to be the pioneer group to initiate the return of tortoises to Pinta Island. Project Pinta is a multi-year project aimed at the restoration of the island following the successful eradication of goats on Pinta in 2003. While complete island restoration will require the eventual repopulation of Pinta with a reproductive tortoise population, scientists and managers are awaiting the final results from genetic analyses of a massive sampling of tortoises before making the final selection of which tortoises to use.
The Galapagos Islands are at the cutting edge of science again – this time as the unfortunate bellwether for global warming and its destructive effects on marine and coastal ecosystems.
A recent article in the journal, Global Change Biology, reports that the warming of waters in the Galapagos by El Niño events, compounded by the unrestrained harvesting of sea life, has brought about devastating changes. It has led to the disappearance or threat of extinction of45 species in Galapagos, including five mammals, six birds, five reptiles, six fishes, and seven corals. Among those threatened are the Mangrove Finch, Galapagos Sea Lion, Marine Iguana, and Galapagos Penguin.
The report follows a major scientific meeting convened last year by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment, the Galapagos National Park Service, Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund and other organizations. The aim was to assess the Galapagos’ vulnerability to climate change.
It found that the 1982 El Niño event, in particular, warmed Galapagos’ waters by several degrees, wiping out large areas of coral and kelp beds. The Galapagos Damsel (Azurina eupalama), once common, was not sighted after 1983. Galapagos Penguins declined to a critical level and are now within ”a hairsbreadth of annihilation.”
Compounding the effects of the 1982 and subsequent El Niño’s has been the massive and unsustainable harvesting of lobsters, sea cucumbers, and large predatory fish. This overfishing increased the population of sea urchins, which overgrazed corals and prevented their recovery.
Sylvia Earle, a leading authority on the world’s oceans, and one of the report’s co-authors, wrote,
“Nowhere on Earth are the combined impacts of climate change and overfishing more clearly defined than in the Galapagos Islands where unique assemblages of wildlife live on the sharp edge of change. Decades of data link recent fishing pressures to disruption of the islands’ fine-tuned systems, making them more vulnerable to natural – and anthropogenic changes in climate.”
Gabriel Lopez, Executive Director of the Charles Darwin Foundation, states,
“It is almost certain El Nino events will be more frequent, more intense” and could have a “devastating impact on the island’s endemic species like sea lions and marine iguanas.”
The report emphasized that Galapagos is a canary in the coal mine, a preview of what will happen to the world’s marine and coastal ecosystems as sea temperatures rise.
Report co-author, Professor Les Kaufmann from Boston University said,
“The Galapagos, the Rosetta Stone of evolution, is now teaching us the far-reaching impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems. Though too late to stop, we now know that the impacts of climate change can be softened by cutting back on fishing. The wildlife we eat today was part of the inner workings of an ecosystem which was under stress from global climate change and when these ecosystems are damaged, species and livelihoods can vanish in a heartbeat.”
Quito - A diesel leak from a tourist ship polluted a 100-metre stretch along a beach in the island of Santa Cruz in Ecuador’s Pacific archipelago of the Galapagos, officials said. Members of the crew of the Evolution ship were cooperating with environmental protection authorities to clean up the fuel spill, officials said Wednesday. To read more…
QUITO – The Peruvian training ship Mollendo caused no environmental damage to the Galapagos coast where it ran aground over the weekend with 300 people aboard and carrying some 200 tanks of bunker fuel, Ecuadorian maritime officials said.
The maneuvers required to tug the ship free caused no environmental damage, though the vessel was transporting fuel banned by archipelago authorities, Puerto Ayora harbormaster Washington Tamayo told Efe.
The ship was unable to anchor Saturday afternoon where it should have because of a mechanical failure that forced it to keep going forward, Tamayo said.
That maneuver left the training ship in such a position that waves constantly struck its stern.
Galapagos National Park divers with cameras verified that neither the hull nor the propeller blades caused any damage, so the decision was taken to tow it to Puerto Ayora, the capital of Santa Cruz Island, with the help of three other vessels, Tamayo said.
“It was done in a secure way with never any danger of spilling waste water or fuel,” Tamayo said, adding that the Peruvian ship used bunker fuel, which is heavier than diesel, a mixture of gas-oil and crude residues that ships are not allowed to use in the Galapagos Islands.
“We didn’t know it was running on that kind of fuel,” Tamayo said.
ENVIRONMENT: Galápagos Islands in Search of Clean Energy By Stephen Leahy* TORONTO, Feb 29 (Tierramérica) - Ecuador has taken the first step towards ending the oil dependence of its Galápagos Islands, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, with the official opening of a 10.8 million dollar wind energy facility on the island of San Cristóbal.
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa toured the facility as part of a celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Galápagos, and proposed to declare the islands fossil fuel free by 2015.
Located 1,000 kilometres off the coast of Ecuador, the archipelago comprises 17 small and 13 large islands that are home to 30,000 people and visited by more than 120,000 tourists each year.
Nearly everything is imported from the mainland, including vast quantities of diesel fuel for energy and transport. In 2001, a tanker ship struck a reef off the coast of San Cristóbal, one of the main islands, spilling 150,000 gallons of fuel into the ocean.
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