Apparently I go on about it too much and coupled with the facts that I have an exam on it tomorrow and that I need to blog about something, here’s some fun fun stuff about the Galapagos Islands.

Although, before I start, I’d just outline my exam. It’s unusual as you’re given the answers three weeks before you go and sit it. It’s a Synoptic Issues Analysis paper, titled ‘Galapagos at Risk?’. Basically, you go into the exam and regurgitate all the information you’ve read up in this resource booklet to come up with a viable solution to a problem. What that problem is exactly, well, nobody knows.

So these are the Galapagos Islands. Pretty, aren’t they.

Just as a basic summary, all the parties happen on Santa Cruz. It’s the place to go for holidays and stuff. Just limit your silly little tourist self to that island, and everything would be dandy.

Isabela is the seahorse shaped one. That’s… pretty much all I know about it. Oh, that and has a lot of volcano-y type things and a fair few species of animals. Amazing.

The bastard invasion

Right, so one of the big deals on Galapagos is that they have stuff they don’t want. Not to shove a big phrase in your face or anything, but the islands are experiencing a state of biotypic disharmony. Scary sounding, but all it involves is basically a rat problem… and other stuff.

Project Pinzon was done by the CDF and the PNG. Its job was to i-rat-icate (see what I did there?) the sodding black rats on the Pinzon and Rabida islands. Seriously, they’re hell. They’re testing it here to hopefully rid the whole set of islands (or archipelago – Fancy, eh.) of the blighters. Problem is, there’s a rare house mouse living there which they thought was dead. Whoopsy. Time to make a poison which only kills the ones you want.

Project Isabela – again done by those clever people at the Charles Darwin Foundation – are trying to get rid of those goats, pigs and donkeys off of the island by literally gunning them down. I think they score higher points for the most imaginative way they can do it. They’re even giving out dog shoes to the ones employed to mow down them all. Basically, they’re eating all the stuff which is endemic (an awesome word – meaning, it’s living there and should be) and pissing off all the tortoises. Best option? Helicopter gun ships.

As a little side note, Galapagos has some pretty awesome species. It has it’s own penguins, tortoises and a nice pair of boobies – a red and a blue footed version. The seals are quite awesome too, and get the birds to eat all the crap that tries to eat them. Win win in my book. It’s also got some cactus and stuff like that, but they aren’t as cool as an iguana which squirts sea-water from its nose.

They’re also killing off the quinine tree on Santa Cruz. It’s a good thing, because it’s poisoning all the cool tortoise dudes and it doesn’t look all that pretty neither. They’re using the nicely titled ‘Hack and Squirt’ method to kill them all off. If I let your imagination run away with that one, that’s best.

There’s some more boring bits about invasive species, but yeah. On Baltra Island, they’re awarding people for neutering their cats and dogs. Nice, eh. That’ll teach them for killing my awesome iguanas.

The natural stuff

The Galapagos Islands are in a bit of a pickle. Being a fair way off of the coast of mainland Ecuador, they get attacked by all sorts. It sits right where a load of ocean currents meet. Most of them are fairly chilly, like the Peru and the Cromwell current. This means that Isabela gets a bit nippy sometimes (sorry Fern Britton, you’ll have to sunbathe somewhere else), but the Santa Cruz island isn’t too bad when it gets a blast of the Panama current.

It also sits right in the way of El Nino. Okay, so I don’t know a lot about it, but it’s something to do with the trade winds failing. The winds which used to keep all the water sloshed over towards Australia die, so then it’s like a slosh of warm water back to the islands. Trouble is, this water’s pretty pointless as everything in it’s pretty dead. This water replaces the stuff everything likes on the island, so essentially everything almost dies. Fortunately it rescues itself just in time, but it’s getting stronger.

The people kicking up a fuss

The biggest problem here is you – Yeah, you tourists. Maybe Fern Britton causes slightly more of a problem, but tourists are a big deal.

Galapagos has no real exports apart from fishing which has pretty much dried up. It gets a good majority of its import profits – a good $418 million – comes from tourism.

Trouble is, only $63 million makes it back into the Galapagocian economy. Reason being that as tourism wasn’t exactly expected to be as bigger deal as Ron Burgundy, so has sort of grown in a haphazard way. Outside investment and big travel groups whore the money, rather than the locals. So spending done on the island goes towards the tour guides next Big Mac.

The ‘mainstream’ tourists are a roudy lot. They come over there, not knowing anything about what the islands are really there for, and expect a good time. They go diving in and out of coral reefs, in and out volcanoes and in and out massive boats which take them to all these places. Obviously, as much as little Johnny wants to pet the tortoise, he just shouldn’t. It’ll probably kill the tortoise (and I’ve heard they aren’t that loving in return).

Everyone wants the best, so electricity needs to be generated by diesel engines. The exponential increase in tourists has lead to a similar increase in petrochemical use. Obviously, I don’t need to hammer home that point anymore than Obama does, so yeah, bad things.

There’s a change in the tourism sector now. They’re donning hiking boots for flip-flops, safety gear for bum-bags and a keen eye for their digital camera. They’re ecotourists, and they’re there to do good. They’re there to actually learn about the island and, in turn, how to look after it. They don’t want to ruin the landscape just because they want a barbeque on the beach, which is always good.

Aside from tourism, the population’s around 21000. It’s got a hefty presence of women to men, as the guys go off and do something manual in Ecuador. The women can stay at home and do womanly things or, more recently, become eco-tour guides and earn some money. Radical.

What to do

If you’ve read this far, well done. That’s basically it for Galapagos. Lots of bad things, and no real solutions. That’s where we come in. Our job in the exam is to look at the problems and suggest possible ways to make everything good again. Things like ecotourism and eradication of invasive species is bound to come up tomorrow. I best get revising it. Good luck tomorrow, yeah?

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