From a special issue: A Brief History of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands 1959-198

Smith, G. T. Corley

English

Aquatic Commons

3() '-IOTICI:\S DE GALAPAGOS '-10.49 
THE MARINE EXTENSION - THE GREAT FIRE 
GL'iTHER RECK. 1984-88 
\Vhcn GLinther Reck arrived with his wife and 
chdJn.:n tll L1KC up hIS post as Director, he had long 
heen famIliar v.ith the Darwin Station and the 
problems of Galapagos conservation. He had begun 
as a tourist guide and then served for years with 
the "iationallnstitute of Fisheries, in which capacity 
he had collaborated with the CDRS and the 
University of Guayaquil in schemes to study and 
protect the resources of the Galapagos waters. It 
was therefore most appropriate that he should be 
in charge of the Darwin Station during the 
discussions leading up to the creation of a marine 
reserve. 
This long-sought development was finally decreed 
by President Leon Febres-Cordero in 1986, 20 years 
after the recommendations in the Grimwood-Snow 
report and long after the more detailed proposals 
of Wellington, Robinson and the authors of the 
Master Plan; but when the decree was promulgated 
it went far beyond their most optimistic demands. 
The "Galapagos Marine Resources Reserve" is to 
include the entire interior waters of the archipelago 
surrounded by a further zone IS nautical miles wide, 
measured from the extreme limits the islands, a total 
of 30,000 square miles (80,000 square kilometres). 
Progress had been slow because of the difficulty in 
reconciling the various local and national interests 
involved, which fell under the jurisdiction of different 
ministries responsible for the law of the sea, defense, 
fisheries, tourism and development. The reserve was 
to be administered by a Commission representing 
these interests, presided over by the Minister of 
Agriculture, who was already responsible for the 
Galapagos National Park. The Commission was 
authorized "to seek the assistance and collaboration 
of the Charles Darwin Research Station and such 
national and international organizations as it 
considers necessary". Much negotiation was still 
needed before detailed administrative plans could be 
finalized. Advice was sought from the Great Barrier 
Reef National Park in Australia and from the Woods 
Hole Oceanographic Institution and the National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the 
U.S.A. 
The importance of extending legal protection to 
the sea as well as to the land area can scarcely be 
exaggerated. The Galapagos are situated at the 
confluence of the great Eastern Pacific currents and 
their waters are of unique scientific interest. Quite 
apart from the direct dependence on the sea of much 
of the wildlife - including nesting seabirds. marine 
iguanas, sea lions and fur seals - the Galapagos 
marine resources may prove to be at least as 
significant scientifically as the better researched 
terrestrial resources. The waters are still in a nearly 
pristine state but the increasing danger of pollution 
from the discharge of waste by cruise ships and the 
growing human settlements is obvious, as is the 
frequence with which ships are wrecked on the 
archipelago's notoriously dangerous shores. (Notice 
de Galapagos, No. 44). These are threats for the 
future. Meanwhile recent research has discovered 
gratifying numbers of sperm whales in the Galapagos 
Grounds off the west coast of Isabela, where they 
were virtually eliminated by whalers in the 19th 
century. 
The El Nino period of extraordinarily heavy 
rainfall was followed by two years of drought. Fire 
broke out in the Darwin Station's administration 
building and, while it was possible to prevent it 
spreading to the other buildings, lack of water and 
appliances thwarted all efforts to save the office and 
most of its valuable contents. Thanks to the 
generosity of Swedish supporters, most of the damage 
was made good in a relatively short time. 
A much bigger fire, started outside the National 
Park by farmers, swept across the desiccated 
vegetation of the Sierra Negra volcano on Isabela 
Island. It lasted from February to July 1985 and 
attracted world-wide publicity, including much 
imaginative misinformation. The local residents, 
armed forces from the mainland, fire-fighting bodies 
from Canada and the U.S.A. gallantly joined the 
National Park Service in the appalling heat. They 
checked the spread of the conflagration by encircling 
it with a firebreak 40 kilometres long, but it was 
months before the belated rains finally extinguished 
the last of the fires. The giant tortoises and other 
better known Galapagos species were never in real 
Noticias de Galapagos, vol. 49, English version, June 1990
\0. ~9 \OTICIAS DE GALAPAGOS 31 
danger but ,orne 175 square kilometres of wilderness, 
,till hareh nplorcd hotanic.llly. were devastated. 
Monitoring of the damage to the vegetation and the 
life that depends nn it began Immediatley but it will 
be years before the effects can be measured and half 
a century before some species of trees can again grow 
to their full size. (Noticias de Galapagos 42, 46). 
With Marcia Wilson in charge of herpetology 
at the Research Station, two decades of captive 
breeding of reptiles was showing encouraging results. 
Much had been achieved by trial and error in this 
pioneering endeavour, but now experiments were 
being conducted by the GNPS and the CDRS in 
a more rigourously scientific manner. The staff of 
the two organisations, advised by Howard and Heidi 
Snell, compared hatching results obtained at different 
temperatures and humidities, and also monitored the 
relative success rates in rearing small tortoises on 
a cement floor inside the centre with those obtained 
on a soil surface in the open air. It had recently 
been discovered that the sex of tortoises is determined 
by the temperature at which the eggs are incubated, 
so it became possible, by controlling the temperatures 
in the incubators, to produce a higher proportion 
of females to males and thus to speed up the eventual 
repopulation of the Galapagos by the giant tortoises 
(galapagos) that gave the islands their name. In 1988, 
the 1000th captive-bred tortoise was released on its 
ancestral island, and there were signs that the oldest 
of these would soon start reproducing in the wild. 
It was not to be expected that, in the harsh Galapagos 
conditions, hatching and rearing success in the wild 
would be as high as at the Station, but it was evident 
that the re-establishment of most of the once 
abundant races of giant tortoises was well under way. 
Perhaps the most striking success was the 
preservation of the Espanola (Hood) Island race 
(Geoche1one elephantopus hoodensis), of which only 
a few elderly survivors remained when the Darwin 
Station was inaugurated. By 1988, Espanola had a 
youthful population of over 200 tortoises, all of them 
captive-bred. Apart from the Arabian Oryx and Pere 
David's Deer, this is the only known case of a wild 
population derived entirely from captive-bred 
animals. (Noticias de Galapagos 25, 44, 45). 
Controlled experiments with hatching and rearing 
land Iguanas lik..:wise produced highly encouraging 
results: Indeed over-crowding in the rearing pens 
became a serious problem. In the wild. only 10«(-
of hatchlings survive their first year but. with the 
introduction of electric incubators and a new 
substrate, the rearing centre achieved a survival rate 
~ - 6 times higher than in nature. Twelve years after 
the rescue operation began, the future of all three 
of the endangered populations of land iguanas 
(whether they are distinct sub-species or species is 
uncertain) seemed secure. There were still problems 
in protecting the young animals after they had been 
released in their traditional colonial areas and this 
was notably the case with the "Seymour-Baltra" 
population. As Baltra Island had become an active 
military and tourist air base and was not included 
in the National Park, the problems of re-introducing 
The Vice-President of Ecuador, Blasco Penaherrera 
Padilla, introducing his son to a giant tortoise under the 
watchful eye of Gunther Reck, Director of the CDRS 
Noticias de Galapagos, vol. 49, English version, June 1990


The marine extension - the great fire

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The marine extension - the great fire

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