Rat Island

Well I survived the computer incident. Just.So now I have the means again to regularly feed my Guardian Online addiction. I was interested to read an article in the environment section about mass tourism in the Galapagos Islands. My earlier blog entry about Lonesome George made my eyes pay attention to this article, and I was interested to see that a rat had been found on the island this week. Nothing special there you may say, but not being indigenous to the islands, there has been cause for concern.

The allegation are currently aimed toward the MV Discovery, a cruise ship with a capacity of around 500 tourists. Arriving from Panama, it could easily have provided safe passage for the rat, which would have then disembarked for a tour of the island. There is the argument that this is just a coincidence, and indeed it could very easily be just that. But what cannot be ignored is that with the increase in tourism, it is highly likely that there will be a wide range of ecological effects on the islands.

1968 was the year that the Galápagos National Park Service was established, and they set themselves the task of creating a working tourism framework, that would protect the islands, but open them up to the undoubted interest of nature lovers around the world. They placed restrictions on the number of visitors allowed on each arriving boat, plus the requirement of a qualified guide for every twenty visitors.

The Galápagos National Park Service were the forerunners of eco-tourism, realising the need to maintain a balance between conservation and tourism. However, the situation now places the islands themselves in a very precarious situation. This huge rise in visitors will place a strain on their existing facilities, not just having an effect on the wildlife, but also on the experience of those people genuinely interested in the islands. The average EasyCruise passenger is not going be passionately interested in the islands as a whole, instead it's just a whistle stop tour; hurried photo opportunities in order to back in time for the lobster dinner and cabaret.

The Galápagos need tourism, no doubts there, but at what price? Their tourism needs to focus on sustainability, and needs to find the balance that it had kept so well until recently. Without this the islands will surely succumb to idle feet pushing back the hedges even further, and before long irreparable damage will have been done. This is a modern day problem that has spread to many delicately beautiful, eco-tourism destinations; the danger is that by losing sight of what makes these places so special we run the likely possibility that we will crush them with our crowds.