Galapagos Islands, Darwin's Inspiration, Is Endangered And Alluring

By DOROTHY SMILJANICH Tribune correspondent

Published: Jul 8, 2007

BALTRA, GALAPAGOS Islands - On these volcanic rocks in the Pacific Ocean 600 miles west of Ecuador, Mother Nature has laid some amazing cards on the table for all to see. Here are birds that have blue webs for feet; cormorants that look like their Florida cousins but have almost no wings; huge iguanas that are as happy in the ocean as they are on land; penguins that are a long way from polar ice but don't mind at all; and, the star of the show, the lumbering giant land tortoise.

This menagerie of unlikely creatures from one island to the next boasts enough variety and strangeness to have inspired Charles Darwin, who visited in 1835 aboard the HMS Beagle, to write "The Origin of Species." Advancing his theory of evolution as a result of natural selection, the book, which will be 150 years old in 2009, turned the worlds of science and religion upside down. They have stayed that way. For despite all the scientific evidence since amassed, a controversy continues today among the faithful who see the islands not as the living proof of evolution but rather as proof of a Creator's power.

To visit these islands, as we did in May, would be astonishing at any time, in any company. But to do it on a small cruise ship with renowned author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins aboard is something akin to deep-sea fishing with Hemingway, rocking with Elvis or dancing with Nureyev:

It is to be in the company of a man who embodies in his very person the essence of the thing he does. And what Dawkins does is write and lecture with great scholarship, skill and wit about science in general and evolution in particular.

A self-proclaimed atheist and intellectual who does not appear to suffer fools gladly, Dawkins is often called "Darwin's Rottweiler" for the loyal ferocity with which he defends his subject. An Oxford zoology professor as well as author, Dawkins has advanced evolutionary science and pooh-poohed religious opposition in such highly literate and best-selling books as "The God Delusion" and "The Selfish Gene."

The 10-day tour we were on with Dawkins as guest lecturer was sponsored by the Center for Inquiry, which is headquartered in Amherst, N.Y., and dedicated "to advance and promote science, reason and inquiry in all areas of human endeavor." The organization has an international reach, a $6 million annual budget, more than 100,000 subscribers to its magazines Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer, and a chapter in Tampa.

Many of the 90 passengers on the ship with us were members; many were self-proclaimed atheists or free thinkers; and the conversations at dinner were decidedly high-brow - maybe about DNA sequencing or about claims of the paranormal or about the threat of religious fundamentalism.

Fearless Creatures

But whatever the visitor's spiritual bent or lack thereof, no one visiting the Galapagos Islands is likely to come away unimpressed.

Nowhere else in the world is there such a collection of incredible creatures, and nowhere else in the world are the animals so fearless in the presence of man, the planet's most rapacious predator.

Here it is possible to walk within arm's reach of an albatross, blue-footed booby or giant tortoise. If you are not careful, it is all too easy to trip over a marine iguana sunning itself in your path or even - perish the thought! - to crush a lava lizard with a careless step.

Here the finches fly so close, they seem about to land on your head. And if you choose to snorkel or dive in these clear waters, don't be surprised if a friendly sea lion shows up and wants to frolic with you or if a manta ray with a 10-foot wingspan passes closely and casually, paying you no mind at all.

The sheer remoteness of these islands historically has kept these animals insulated from man's presence, so they have not learned yet to fear us. But that situation may be in the process of changing as tourism increases and ratchets up the stakes in this fragile and increasingly imperiled archipelago.

The Galapagos Islands consist of 250 or so islands; some large and inhabited by human settlements, others only barren, desolate rocks. Born out of a volcanic "hot spot" deep beneath the ocean and thrust upward to the surface of the sea, they are all moving ever so slowly atop a huge tectonic plate toward the mainland of South America.

As a result, the newer, western islands, perhaps only 1 million years old, tend to be starker and emptier than the older islands toward the east - some as old as 5 million years - that have had time to weather and may be forested and inhabited by men and animals alike.

One of the largest, San Cristobal, even boasts a fresh-water lake that has had time to develop in an ancient volcanic cinder cone.

Limited Tourism Allowed

In 1959, Ecuador declared almost all of the land area of the islands a national park and designated certain sites on a handful of the islands as "visitor sites" open to limited tourism; others are generally considered off-limits and closed to the public.

Two years later, the Charles Darwin Research Station was established in the Galapagos as an international, nonprofit organization. Its efforts include working with the park service, conducting field research, operating a captive breeding program for the tortoises and helping train naturalists to accompany visitors to Galapagos Islands National Park, which is, in turn, contained in the Galapagos Marine Resources Reserve.

All of which is to say that these islands, animals and waters are protected sites. Each visitor is expected to pay a $100 entrance fee and behave according to guidelines put in place by the park service.

But there are a lot of islands and a vast expanse of sea to patrol, let alone to protect, and Ecuador is a poor country of severely limited resources. In many ways, that is a prescription for disaster, despite the well-meaning intentions of many hard-working Ecuadorans and sympathetic international supporters.

The problems are varied and many. They include illegal human immigration to the livable islands; destruction wrought by the introduction of exotic, invasive plants and animals (including feral pigs and wild goats as well as fire ants that can eat into a giant tortoise shell); rapid development without regard to the integrity of the land and its limited resources; pressures to open more of the area to larger cruise ships and more airplanes carrying many more passengers and requiring ever more infrastructure; and the destruction wrought by careless guests who trample nesting sites, ignore protective guidelines, trash the environment and, in general, wander willy-nilly around the Galapagos harassing the wildlife in hopes of getting a good photograph.

Many of these problems will sound familiar to longtime Floridians. As we are unable to protect even our own Everglades despite resources much richer than those of tiny Ecuador, we are in no position to criticize - only to identify and sympathize. The Galapagos Islands, just like the Everglades, are a world treasure.

Both are designated World Heritage Sites by the United Nations, and the Galapagos Islands were added to the list of World Heritage Sites in danger on June 26.

They do not belong only to those who live on them or are privileged to visit them, but rather they belong to all the world - for there is nothing like them anywhere else in the world. And all of us must share in the responsibility - and the privilege - of protecting them against rapacious forces that see a profit to be made in exploiting them.

If we lose them by mismanagement or greed, we will have lost something irreplaceable. And no matter our beliefs, we will have to answer for our sloppy stewardship to future generations who will wonder what in the world we were thinking.

Dorothy Smiljanich is a freelance travel writer who lives in St. Petersburg.