News

A group of  the public sector employees, some of them working for the Galapagos National Park, have been protesting this past week against the fact of government authorities proposing to  decrease salaries and benefits for public employees in Ecuador.

The proposal from the Secretaría Nacional Técnica de Remuneraciones (SENRES) is to cut salaries in the public sector of Galapagos, as requested by the 002 mandate that enforces to cut off some of the benefits of the public employees.

The Special Law of Galapagos allows the public sector employees to earn four times more than if they were in Mainland Ecuador. For example, if the salary for a services employee is $395 in Ecuador,  the same position in the Galapagos automatically pays $1580.

The Galapagos National Park and other local institutions’ employees are demanding their benefits to be untouched and respected. The Governor of Galapagos and other local authorities are negotiating to find viable solutions. 

Visitor sites and tourism activities are flowing normally. 

The Galapagos authorities will start applying the Transit Control Card required for all travelers flying to the islands starting on February 25th 2008. The card fee for each traveler will be 10 US dollars.To help travelers in this process, the Galapagos National Institute (INGALA) has opened counters at Quito and Guayaquil airports in which they can buy the Transit Control Card. Local airlines and tour agencies can help passengers with more information and card registration before their departure. For more information and registering to save time, please visit the Transit Control Card Web page at: http://www.ingala.gov.ec/tct/  This card is a new strategy that authorities are using to control and reduce illegal immigration to Galapagos.

Tourism companies are seeking advice on sustainable tourism. And consumers are becoming more and more conscious about the environmental and social impacts of their purchasing.

For this reason, IGTOA is taking part in a program to develop Sustainable Tourism Baseline Criteria, in partnership with Rainforest Alliance, and organizations like the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), and the World Conservation Union (IUCNP.

During the month of January a series of consultation activities is taking place with key representatives from the private sector around the world. The main product of this effort will be baseline international criteria for sustainable tourism. This will help IGTOA members to create state of the art operations in the Galapagos Islands.

Learn more about this initiative

The travel section of the January 5th Wall Street Journal ran a well-researched and balanced article on challenges facing the Galapagos Islands.

GALAPAGOS UNDER SIEGE

“The remote islands are known for a prehistoric landscape. Why a growing flock of well-meaning ecotourists is posing a new threat.

By Stan Sesser

Most of the wild goats that ravaged this famous archipelago, denuding some islands of their vegetation, have been hunted down. The same goes for the wild pigs that ate turtle eggs and killed small animals. Now comes the biggest problem of all — people like me.

Click on the image above to see an interactive version of this map.

I’ve just spent two days here in Puerto Ayora, the largest town in the Galapagos, where new cinderblock buildings are radiating in every direction. This was followed by a five-day cruise to see the remarkable wildlife that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The new hotels in Puerto Ayora and the large cruise ships — eight of them now carry as many visitors as the 72 smaller vessels that used to represent local tourism — are signs of the times. They’re part of the spiraling growth that has tripled the number of annual visitors to 120,000 in 15 years.”

Read the full article

Thanks to a public outcry, a plan to seed the ocean with iron dust near the Galapagos Islands has been thwarted. As IGTOA reported last year, Planktos, a California-based private company, planned to dump tons of iron dust into the ocean in hopes of encouraging plankton blooms, which according to the company would then absorb carbon dioxide. Planktos would make money from the carbon offsets supposedly produced. But scientists and conservation organizations (including IGTOA) widely denounced the plan.

The Planktos’ ship, Weatherbird II, was headed for waters near Galapagos when the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society threatened to intercept and stop it. It went to Bermuda, where it also found a Sea Shepherd ship. It has since sailed on, looking for another location. The last word was that it was near the Canary Islands, but was being thwarted from entering port there.