Fernando Ortiz grew up on mainland Ecuador and has lived in the Galapagos the past twenty years. His career path has led him from tour guide to dive guide and eventually dive company manager. Along the route he decided that talking to tourists about conservation was not enough, so he made the leap to full-time environmentalist. Today he runs Conservation International’s office in Puerto Ayora. We talk on the town’s main dock, Zodiac’s whipping back and forth behind us overloaded with tourists, bags of cement, cases of water and beer, two-by-fours and cement blocks, frozen chickens and everything else needed to run a community of 40,000 on an island separated from the mainland by six hundred miles.
“I have realized a few things in the last few years regarding how best to preserve the Galapagos, primarily that it doesn’t matter how good your technical arguments or human arguments are, it’s not about that. It’s mostly, and unfortunately, all about economics and politics.
“I try not to be critical to tourism as an economy. In fact, if we analyze it in one way, tourism is probably the best way in which nature can pay in cash for its survival. If I were to go back to the islands as I saw them for the first time, nineteen years ago, I would probably find the same biologic, ecologic and evolutionary processes still happening, the same blue-footed boobies still nesting on the same trails. The same for the sea lions and penguins. Tourism has actually been well controlled, despite its growth. It’s the indirect impacts of tourism that we need to control.
“For that we need to be able to make some hard political decisions which then need to be followed out by everyone. Unfortunately when you have, let’s say a mayor who is looking for a re-election, he may not favor some regulations that sound restrictive for some of his potential voters. While some of our politicians are aware of the fact that natural resources are limited here in the Galapagos, that there is not enough water, not enough land, that we can’t produce much here locally, who understand the importance of conservation, most regard those as things that can be ‘negotiated.’ Nature cannot be negotiated.
“My children are growing up here and there couldn’t be any better place for a child to grow up. It’s fantastic, they are having experiences no other child – certainly no city kid – can have, which is very important. But do I think we’ll have to leave the Galapagos eventually, because it’s changing too fast. There are simply too many people. All of a sudden there are things here that didn’t used to be here, like violence and crime, a result of too many people.
“The frustration is that I think we know how to save and protect the Galapagos, but I don’t think we have the political will to follow through. In a way, I have become a Galapagos expert, working in different trades and that experience allows me to be analytical right now, to see things from different perspectives, and I still think it is possible there is room for optimism. Again, though it sounds cliché, I really do believe we can make a difference otherwise I wouldn’t be working in conservation, I would probably still be working in tourism, making more money while I can, having a great time scuba diving every day.
“But I know that things can be better managed, especially on land. The difficult part is that we are now surrounded by a one-hundred-and-thirty-eight-square-kilometer marine reserve, which is harder to manage. Thanks to illegal fishing and a boom in industrial fishing many of the beautiful fish that make the Galapagos special are at risk. On paper we are able to come up with strategies to protect them. But we have to have strategies that go beyond the limits of the Galapagos, beyond the marine reserve, all the way to the mainland and further.
“Ironically the Galapagos National Park and the Galapagos Marine Reserve are far advanced in terms of having the right tools and the right resources for managing the impacts of people. Many other protected areas in the world look up at us because we are breaking new ground here, things that are then replicated in other protected places. But we also have our failures, which unfortunately are also being replicated.
“Tourism, if well managed – and I emphasize, if well managed – has a chance to become the best opportunity for people to make a living here, without effecting the environment. But we have to keep our eyes on not just what happens to the visitor sites but the rest of the Galapagos. Let’s not be so short term. But if you look at the numbers, the growth in tourism is scary. We’ve had sustained growth for the past twenty years of twelve to fourteen percent a year and don’t see it slowing down.
“We have allowed market pressures to rule tourism in Galapagos. Many of my friends are tour operators and I ask them all the time what if something gets out of control here – species disappear, too much pollution — and tomorrow people start canceling their trips to Galapagos.What would happen then? They have no answers. Neither does the government on mainland Ecuador. Everybody knows we have a so-called golden goose here and that we need to take care of it. I hope as a society, and as institutions, that we can cope with this challenge. I believe there is an important group of well-intentioned people working in the right direction. All we can do is hope for the best.”
It would be wrong on its face to say that tourism is the biggest problem facing the Galapagos today. Simultaneously, it is accurate to say that the growth in tourism in the one-of-a-kind archipelago is the primary reason the islands are “in danger.” Those are not my words, but UNESCO’s, in 2007 … the same year Ecuador’s new president claimed the islands were at “great risk” and signed a decree making their protection a national priority. You get the sense that just defining the exact problem facing the Galapagos, for both locals and outsiders, is tricky.
With ninety seven percent of the islands off-limits and under national park protection – small, guided tours limited to 60 designated sites – the system that introduces tourists to the nineteen Galapagos islands has long been regarded a model of eco-tourism. But the success of that model is what puts them at such risk today: In 1991 there were 41,000 visitors, this year there will be close to 200,000; during that same period human population has risen from a few thousand to 40,000. Those are a lot of combined footsteps – as well as ship and plane traffic — for such a fragile eco-system (the so-called “Mona Lisa of biodiversity”).
The sudden arrival of so many people from so many parts of the world introduces parasites which threaten both flora and fauna; permanent residents arrive desirous of re-creating their mainland lifestyles, including cars, dogs and cats, and air conditioning; tour operators are pushing to expand their offerings to include sport fishing and skydiving.The Ecuadorian government has tried, with limited success, to limit migration and is considering raising the national park fee paid by every tourist from $100 to $135, an attempt to slow the numbers.
Jack Nelson is one of the Galapagos’ most-veteran tour operators, coming to the islands to live permanently in 1967. Like others like him, in different settings around the world who have watched their own personal paradises become overly popular, he is alarmed.“To a tourist, things look good. You still see a lot of animals, and not many other people,” he says. “But get outside those controlled (national park) parameters, and you’ll find a big mess nobody can figure out what to do about.”
While we were filming in and around the islands we met longtime Galapagos guide Sylvia Vargas on a few occasions. A native Ecuadorian, she’s been coming here for more than twenty years and has lived in Puerto Ayora off and on since first visiting as a teenager. She feels both blessed to be working in such an incredible place and worried that tourism and migration may be taking too big a toll.
“Personally, I think tourism should be capped for the moment. Higher entry fees haven’t worked to slow the growth. One tour operator I work for recently told me that the people who are coming to the Galapagos today are coming with a different idea about the place – they don’t ask as much anymore about wildlife, their first questions are about the comfort of the ship. They want more air-conditioning, more service, nicer cabins, a massage, a more comfortable mattress and expect a lot of chemicals on board to keep things clean and tidy … all of which have a direct impact on the Galapagos. More energy used, more garbage created, more pollution.
“I came first in 1984 when there were two thousand people living in town and two cars. I knew everyone on the street and was offered food by friends every day. The electricity on the island used to shut down at night. Now there are twenty times as many people and two hundred times as many cars. And we have electricity twenty-four hours a day. I miss the peacefulness of back then.
“But I have talked with people who work as guides in other places and they always say that we Galapagos guides are spoiled because we see such incredible wildlife every day. I guess they are right. But for me the most popular sites are too crowded, sometimes there are so many people I feel … embarrassed.
“My biggest worry is that more people living here means more demand for everything. I don’t see people thinking about having a different lifestyle than what they have on the mainland. They will tell you they came to the Galapagos to live in a peaceful place, but they expect to have exactly the same things that they had on the mainland. Why would you have a pet dog or cat here? Why would you have a car if you live in town? Why would you build a new house with air conditioning, when electricity is so hard to create? At Christmas on the mainland we decorate our houses with lots of outdoors lights and now they do the same thing here even though the power comes from a gas generator and the gas comes from far away.”
The Charles Darwin Research Center sits atop a long hill climbing up from Puerto Ayora, on the big island of Santa Cruz. Part of the Charles Darwin Foundation established in 1959 – the lone international research and advisory institution dedicated to exclusively studying the Galapagos – the CDRS is both an archive of historical scientific study and site of various laboratories engaged in today’s most cutting-edge research in the islands. Many of the world’s most-expert Galapganian scientists either have worked here or still do and we’ve walked up the hill to visit with one, marine biologist Alex Hearn … who we find with his hands in a tank, coddling one of the darlings of local marine life, the sea cucumber.
Sitting on a second-story deck overlooking the blue ocean that is his backyard we talk about the impacts of over fishing here. Some highlights:
“You know the Galapagos has a history of over-exploitation that goes way back to the whalers of the sixteenth century. Ever since we’ve had successive waves of boom-bust fisheries. The latest being the sea cucumber which started in the early Nineties as a result of the resource collapsing on the continent followed by a sizable migration of fishers who had already successively depleted the sea cucumber along the coast of Ecuador moving to the islands and hammering the resource here. At the time it was unregulated and there was no way of stopping it because there was no Marine Reserve. By the time the Marine Reserve was created a lot of the damage had already been done. Sometimes we forget that the Marine Reserve management system inherited a lobster resource which had already collapsed in the Eighties, and a sea cucumber resource that had already been heavily fished for ten years .…”
“In terms of coastal fishing, the number of local fishermen — who are the only ones legally allowed to fish here — has nearly tripled during the Nineties, from about 400 to over 1,000. Fishing around the coast has increased dramatically and we haven’t been very successful in managing it. In part because it’s a group with a lot of political power as well as the perception of an immediate need. Since 1998 this local management system has failed to take into account the sustainability of both lobster and sea cucumber. The result is that both are suffering, badly ….”
“When you’re at university or when you’re studying a particular species biologically you’re focused on the species. When you’re looking at the fisheries, the actual biology of the species is the least important thing really, your job becomes more about managing people. Getting them, first of all, to trust that our advice is first and foremost because we are scientists and is focused on sustainability. Our motivation is not about eliminating or prohibiting fishermen. There is a big lack of trust here, partly due to the fact that we’re both a science and conservation organization and carry a fair amount of political power as well. As a result we vote on the system as a conservation sector but we also provide the technical advice, which may sometimes seen as a little bit suspect. Some locals, fishermen, will say ‘You’re providing the advice just to justify your position.’ It can get very complex. It’s about building trust and showing them that the long-term impacts of over fishing and are very difficult to prove but that we still need to make changes now ….”
“Working in Galapagos is like a rollercoaster. There are times when it’s immensely frustrating and there are times when it’s just paradise. To tell the truth, for me, as a young scientist coming to Galapagos straight out of university, to be able to develop lines of research, to be able to publish, to be able to take the research from the sea to the government and follow that entire process is something you really don’t get in many other places. On a personal level I am eternally grateful for Galapagos. Besides, Galapagos also gave me a wife and a baby. So what can I say?”
I had nothing to add to the hoopla following the unsurprising passing of the King of Pop (twenty-plus years of prescription medications have to take a heavy-heavy toll), but I did have the great opportunity to spend time with Mr. Cronkite, which is what the one hundred and thirty five CBS employees who flew into Des Moines for the month of January 1980 to cover the presidential caucuses called him.
I was the editor of the weekly alternative newspaper in Iowa and was hired as Cronkite’s aide de camp for four days, handed the keys to a brand new Cadillac and a mobile phone the size of a brief case. CBS, then the nightly news leader, spared no expense covering the first-in-the-nation vote, shipping in a gross of workers, renting the Des Moines Civic Center for its broadcasts and out-spending by double what the candidates were then allowed to spend on the Iowa caucuses ($450,000).
Cronkite jokes with Ann Landers
When I picked Cronkite up at the airport he was not alone; he walked off the plane side-by-side with colleague and NBC competitor John Chancellor. “There must be only one plane a day to Des Moines,” he joked. Though hidden behind dark glasses, he was recognized immediately. Polls at the time showed him running neck and neck with the Pope as the most trusted man on the planet, others suggested he should run for president himself.
Cronkite’s wish was for some old-fashioned reporting, so we spent the afternoon visiting Democrats in their rented headquarters, first Jimmy Carter’s, then the usurper Ted Kennedy’s. Cronkite was invited to back rooms where he pulled a reporter’s notebook out of his suit pocket for off-the-record briefings; between stops he and producer Ernie Leiser would compare notes in the backseat of the Cadillac. (“I’m surprised Carter’s still working the phones this late,” said Cronkite, “and can you believe what a hick that campaign guy was?”)
Early evening found us at the Adventureland Palace on the outskirts of town to watch a Ronald Reagan speech. Chancellor was there too, and the two anchors stood side by side as the front-running governor of California pitched himself. Afterwards Cronkite said it appeared Reagan had “lost the wind from his sail.” “He couldn’t even read a good speech,” he said.
The next morning began early on the stage of the Civic Center, where “Face the Nation” host George Herman was interviewing George H.W. Bush. Afterwards, leaning against vending machines, Cronkite and Bush watched Jimmy Carter on “Meet the Press.” In the car afterwards Cronkite would predict the race a shoe-in for Carter and pick Bush over a “tottering” Reagan.
That Sunday afternoon it was the Republican’s turn for visits from the King of Television, so we dropped into Reagan and John Connally headquarters’ before hitting the Ramada Inn to watch a Howard Baker’s stump speech.
Cronkite had considered inviting all of the CBS workers to watch Super Bowl XIV but when he was reminded there were more than 100, he limited it to a half-dozen: A pair of “Evening News” writers, Leiser, statistician Warren Mitofsky (who in the years to come would be credited as the creator of voter sampling used by all the networks), reporter Morton Dean and me. Cronkite sat in a burgundy chair, his feet propped on an ottoman, drank scotch, ate pork rinds and lost $5 to me when the Steelers trounced the Rams 31-19. After the game he was off to play tennis with the governor of Iowa. (He was disgruntled the next morning when the Des Moines Register reported that the governor’s doubles team had beaten his twosome “handily.” “I don’t call 6-4 ‘handily,’ “ Cronkite joked.)
Early the next morning, in warmish January temperatures of twenty degrees, he taped stand-ups for the election night show in front of the Iowa capital and spent the afternoon preparing for his 10:30 special. He was a clearly a story while in town, more recognized than most of the presidential candidates, thus sat for interviews several times that day. “I really don’t like all the attention,” he said later, “I wish we didn’t have to work under the kind of structure that makes ‘stars’ out of anchormen.”
The major concern for Cronkite and his team was calling the race first, and correctly. Which they did, at 8:51 CST, Cronkite busting onto air declaring a certain Carter victory and a dead-heat between Bush and Reagan, each with 31 percent of the vote. CBS was the first network to call the races and once off the air Cronkite tipped his hat to Mitofsky.
By 11:30 p.m., Cronkite’s duties were over. “We should have stayed at the Hotel Fort Des Moines,” he said, “that’s where the action is.” So that’s where we went. Bush was giving his victory speech on the second floor of the hotel (suggesting he now had the “Big Mo”) and it was so crowded even Cronkite couldn’t squeeze in, nudging past a dour-looking Bob Dole during the effort. Until 2 a.m. we went between bars at the Fort Des Moines and the Hotel Savery, Cronkite smoking a foot-long cigar and drinking scotch. During the course of the night several women asked his friends for the 63-year-old anchorman’s room number.
The next morning, the New Hampshire primary just a week away, in the car to the airport Cronkite was still taking satisfaction in CBS’s early calls. “Right on top,” he said. (Carter trounced Kennedy, capturing 37 percent of the vote to 12 percent; Bush squeaked past Reagan, 31-29.)
“Walter, you know, you really should run for president yourself,” said then director of CBS News Burt Benjamin, who’d flown in the day before from Los Angeles.
“Well Burt,” came that all-familiar tone, from the back of the car, “I think we’ll wait and see how many uncommitteds there are after New Hampshire. And then maybe we’ll go after them.”
While in the Galapagos filming we ran into an American writer living in Puerto Ayora, the big town on the island of Santa Cruz, researching a book about exactly the same subject of our film – the current state of affairs across the archipelago.
I was particularly curious about her reportage on Darwin’s initial reaction to the islands that will forever be linked with his theory of evolution.
Like other biographers of Darwin – who first visited in 1835 as a curious but inexperienced 26-year-old, born the same day as Abraham Lincoln – she labels his role as evolutionary mystery solver “one of the greatest myths of the history of science.” Citing a study by Harvard professor and MacArthur Foundation “genius” Frank Sulloway, the book details how little Darwin actually took away from the Galapagos after his five-week visit. He had “no eureka flashes of enlightenment,” she writes, “it would take decades before his final theory transcended his religious beliefs and his enduring doubts.”
In his book “Voyage of the Beagle” Darwin referenced the Galapagos sparingly; in his “On the Origin of Species,” published twenty years later, he never mentioned the finches – mistakenly thought by many to be the linchpin of his evolutionary theory – and which are named for him.
It took those twenty years between publications for the significance of the Galapagos to sink in on Darwin. For two decades he wrestled with the history of creationism and its relevance to species diversity. In the end, he came down on the right side of the argument (unless of course you are among those who continue to believe the planet is only 6,000 years old and that life as we know it was created in six days). That his name and theory are so inextricably linked with both evolution and the Galapagos is something Darwin could have never predicted. Nor could he have predicted the clash of economics and the environment, which so wrack the place today.
Often by the time the mainstream media runs big stories about an environmental battle it’s often too late. I’ve seen it up-close dozens of times during the past couple decades and have reported so many David-versus-Goliath stories – usually positing good-hearted indigenous peoples and international environmental groups against greedy, monolithic utility companies and strong-arming government agents – that the stories have almost become fill-in-the-blanks. (Just change the name of the indigenous tribe, the utility company and the country and the story – and outcome – are usually very similar.)
Yet despite ominous recent headlines in the Wall Street Journal (“Galapagos Under Siege”), the Times (“Can Darwin’s Lab Survive Success?”) and UK’s Independent (“Tourism, Over-Population and Overfishing Have Become the Blight of the Galapagos”), I happen to believe that the Ecuadorian archipelago will survive (even if more and more of its endemic creatures may not) and flourish. In some respects, as the standard bearer for the planet’s evolutionary history, it simply must. As Alex Hearn, a marine biologist with the Charles Darwin Research Center on Santa Cruz Island told us about the Galapagos future, “if we can’t get it right here, where can we?” A microcosm of the planet’s wildlife, if the Galapagos loses its wildness it will feel like the end is near for the rest of our wild places.
Given my interest in man’s relationship with the sea, it was hard not to go to the Galapagos for a first-hand look at exactly how we are impacting this once truly special place. Spurred by comments by the Ecuadorian president (“the Galapagos are at great risk”) and UNESCO, which first declared the Galapagos a world heritage site and has now put it on an “in danger” list, we took video cameras and digital recorders and came back with a story not so much about the incredible biodiversity of its wildlife but about how man is wrestling with his presence there.
The film we’ve made – “What Would Darwin Think?” – is nearly complete; in advance of that I wanted to share some of the stories, photos and videos brought back from several weeks of conversations and poking around.
According to a recent report by the Darwin Foundation, “Galápagos at Risk” the islands’ crisis does not just stem from an unprecedented rise in tourism, but also from a change in the marketplace. “Early tourism in the Galápagos was characterized by nature-loving tourists,” the report said, seeking “to learn about Darwin and see the amazing species that helped him to develop his theory of evolution.” It noted that these guests were “easily accommodated by smaller, locally owned tour operators.”
But, the study continued, the market expanded to include “eco-tourists,” who also like to visit places like Machu Picchu, the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, Easter Island and the Great Barrier Reef. These tourists are “often more selective in terms of required comfort and is better served by multinational tour operators,” the report said.
A consequence has been that local owners cannot compete with the foreign-run companies doing business in the Galápagos. Of the $418 million generated by tourism annually, only $63 million is estimated to enter the local economy. And of the 80 tourism boats allowed to operate in the Galápagos, only about 40 percent are locally owned.
“We have to think about the people and not just the plants and animals, or it will all collapse,” the report concluded.
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