Linking Livelihoods and Conservation: Challenges Facing the Galápagos Islands - Island Futures: Conservation and Development Across the Asia-Pacific Region - page 73

Chapter 6
Linking Livelihoods and Conservation:
Challenges Facing the Galápagos Islands
Mark R. Gardener and Christophe Grenier
Introduction
The Galápagos Islands are hailed as “evolution's workshop” (Larson 2002 ): they
conjure up images of idyllic isolation, giant tortoises, finches and a visit by
Charles Darwin. Less known is that humans have been present in the archipelago
since the beginning of the nineteenth century. American whalers and Ecuadorian
colonists were early arrivers there, and Darwin mentioned both when he visited
the Galápagos in 1835. The immigrant population mostly lived from agriculture
and fisheries until the 1970s. Since then, however, tourism has become the major
economic means of survival; the tourism-driven economy has attracted many new
migrants from mainland Ecuador and the resident population has grown at an
amazing rate. In 1962, 3 years after the national park was established, Galápagos
had 2,300 inhabitants; it had 4,000 inhabitants in 1974 when organized tours of
the islands began. In 1990 there were 10,000 residents and 40,000 tourists visit-
ing the islands annually. In 2008 the settled population is estimated at 30,000 and
more than 170,000 tourists visit the islands each year. Virtually all food, fuel and
consumable goods needed to support the resident, migrant and tourist popula-
tions must be imported from the mainland. Despite legislation designed to protect
the environment, the sheer number of visitors pushes island resources to their
limits. All of the above also increases air and sea transport between the continent
and the archipelago, and so the arrival of more invasive species. Yet tourism-driven