At the time these residents were primarily involved in activities of sustenance: fishing, hunting, agriculture, and cattle rearing, along with primitive accommodation services for tourists and scientists. Residents are allowed to live on four of the fifteen major islands -- San Cristóbal, Isabela, Santa Cruz, and Floreana. While the majority of zones has been restricted from any sort of development or resource extraction, a management plan for the marine zone has been implemented to address local needs. This allows for local, traditional and artisanal commercial fishing, for both local and foreign markets, within the reserve.

The establishment of the CDRS and zoning of the islands did not anticipate the extent to which both tourism and the islands' population would grow. Up until the 1970's, tourism to the islands was incidental, uncontrolled and unorganized. Through the following decades, tourism has dramatically increased, becoming the primary source of revenue for the islands. The upgrade of two airports in the 1980's has allowed for larger-capacity jet aircrafts, resulting in increased visitation. Between 1974 and 1994, tourism jumped from 7500 to over 50,000, the majority being foreign visitors.

Aside from census reports for the Galápagos little, if any, research has been done concerning its residents. Reasons for such meager information perhaps stem from there being no permanent population before 1900 and no significant one until the 1970's. Prior to the tourist boom during the 1970's, there were no more than 1,000 residents, primarily involved in subsistent activities. The boom contributed to a tremendous influx of immigrants from the mainland, causing the Galápagos population to rise from approximately 3,500 in 1974 to 10,000 in 1990. Seeking to pull themselves out of poverty on the mainland, these immigrants tend to be low skilled workers without jobs, without family and without resources. Currently, the population is estimated to be 14, 000. The immigration rate has been disproportionate to the local infrastructure, and is believed to have exceeded the carrying capacity of the land allotted for human use. If population numbers continue to increase, then it can be certain that protection efforts by the park will be threatened.

Uproar in the Galápagos

The staff of the Park Service and CDRS were also physically and verbally threatened, and the Station Director was notified in writing that the strike committee would take whatever action necessary to stop workers from returning to the CDRS. The leaders of this strike also threatened that areas in the National Park would be burned and tourists taken hostage unless the government negotiated with them and met their demands. These threats were made repeatedly on Galápagos radio stations, national television, and in a letter from the Strike Committee to the President of Ecuador.

Some of the demands in the bill and from protesters were the creation of a provincial council to govern the islands, increase spending for the archipelago's urban infrastructure, and a requirement that all visitors spend at least one night on the Galápagos. Some residents even demanded that tourism be limited to Ecuadorian citizens. Ballen feared that signing of the bill would threaten the island's protected natural areas which, in turn, would damage its tourism industry.

The government dispatched 150 marines to the islands to calm the situation. Though no overt violence came of the protests, the protestors -- including Eduardo Veliz, the Galápagos' delegate to the National Congress -- called off the demonstrations only when Ballen agreed to negotiate a new charter for the islands. Critics pointed out that the President's acquiescence gave implicit support to illegal activity as a means of gaining legal leverage. But all agree that of the millions of dollars raised each year by the $80 fee charged to each Galápagos tourist, too little of that money goes to benefit either the islands or their legal inhabitants.

Threats to Terrestrial Biodiversity

Recent data show that in the last three years, at over 500 separate localities in the islands, every suitable beach or cove bears signs of camping and extended use by fishermen. Areas without sand are often cleared of rocks to make camping sites. Moreover, the scarce forests of tall mangroves on western Isabela and Fernandina islands are the only habitat of the rarest species of Darwin's finch, the tool-using Mangrove Finch. Cutting those heretofore undisturbed forests to hide illegal equipment, filter the tell-tale smoke, and fuel sea cucumber cooking pots and campfires directly endangers that bird species.

Visual impacts are obvious in numerous places that 10-20 years ago never had any notable accumulated solid waste. Other impacts are unknown quantitatively, except that individual animals are known to be killed or severely injured in a variety of ways by solid waste: sea turtles eat plastic bags; sea lions are lacerated by metal cans and strangled by items like pulleys and fan belts.

There is no question that the amount of solid waste in the islands has been increasing rapidly, especially that thrown into the sea from vessels. The other concern is that accumulating waste on land from local communities and the relatively few conscientious tourism vessels that bring solid waste to Santa Cruz for incineration or disposal in "land fills" (open garbage dumps on lava fields), create an unsustainable burden on the fragile ecosystem of the Galápagos.

From: Greg Aplet, Matt James & Marc Miller
Directors, Galápagos Coalition.

David Brown is a geography graduate student working on eco-tourism in the Galápagos. He can be reached via email.