Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands

by Michael D'Orso

Book Overview

Mention the Gal pagos Islands to almost anyone, and the first things that spring to mind are iguanas, tortoises, volcanic beaches, and, of course, Charles Darwin. But there are people living there, too -- nearly 20,000 of them. A wild stew of nomads and grifters, dreamers and hermits, wealthy tour operators and desperately poor South American refugees, these inhabitants have brought crime, crowding, poaching, and pollution to the once-idyllic islands...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060955767
• ISBN13: 9780060955762
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 345 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Most Invasive Animal

You know the Galapagos Islands. Darwin made them famous, of course, as a spark for his initial insights on evolution. The specks of land on the equator, off mainland Ecuador, have continued to perform as observatories for evolution. The tiny islands, burned by volcanoes and equatorial sun, have far more life than such an environment might seem able to support, but besides the famous and unusual bird species, there are hundreds of species of starfish, eighty species of spiders, and many others. If you watch TV documentaries or leaf through photo books, you get a flavor of just how rich and strange the life there is. You might know that the animals are so unused to humans that they have not learned to flee even hunters. You might have the idea that the deserted islands harbor but a few scientists and the ecotourists who come to see the unique offerings. _Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands_ (HarperCollins) by Michael D'Orso offers a different view of the islands, specifically about one of its newest and most intrusive species. There are about 20,000 humans who make the Galapagos their home, or at least their workplace. They are not just scientists, but hoteliers, nightclub owners, poachers, beggars, religious proselytizers, law enforcers, and more. The title of this eye-opening book isn't a surprise; all these people are not doing the islands any good."These islands were simply not made for people," D'Orso writes, but he has interviewed a lot of them for this book to portray humans that are making a go of it anyway. Some of them are eccentric, some admirable, but the islands are few, and have desirable properties, and surpassing written law, the law of supply and demand holds sway (just as Darwin knew). Humans have a poor record of improving the lands they have inhabited everywhere, but D'Orso is withering in particular scorn for the corrupt Ecuadorian government, colloquially called "Absurdistan." Such an environment only encourages people to grab any profits they can, and makes impossible long range planning for conserving the islands' resources. Global agencies are reluctant to invest as they can predict how little money would make it to environmental improvement. There has been a proposal that the Galapagos should be under UN trusteeship; after all, it is one of those sites that requires little imagination to view as belonging to the heritage of all humans. From time to time someone suggests banning tourism. Neither proposal is likely to impress those who are currently gaining incomes from things as they stand.D'Orso's book brings an important problem to light. It is written as an entertaining profile of different members of the human species who have washed ashore on Galapagos. There are the ex-hippie who has run a hotel there for thirty-five years, the German recluse, the park ranger who endangers himself by hunting poachers, the charmingly corrupt mayor, the Jehovah's Witness naturalist guide, an

tale of greed, poverty, and corruption

Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 30, 2003The Galápagos Islands have the honor of being the only sizable, habitable land mass to remain unpopulated into the 20th century. The islands' lower slopes and some of the smaller islets are a weird moonscape of ancient lava flows devoid of fresh water. Uphill, however, are permanent water sources and soil capable of supporting orange, papaya, and coconut trees, to say nothing of herds of cattle. Despite these lush conditions, no community had attempted to live on the Galápagos until the publication in Germany in 1923 of a travel book called "Galápagos: World's End" that described the islands as a tropical paradise. A few eccentrics came to see for themselves. They have been coming ever since. Michael D'Orso went to the Galápagos in 1999 to chronicle the unusual native fauna. Not the huge iguanas that dive into the surf to feed, the finches that obligingly speciate while ornithologists watch, or the vast colonies of blue-footed boobies. The animals that fascinate D'Orso are the more eccentric members of species of homo sapiens, a type in which the Galápagos abound.Take the charmingly corrupt mayor, leader of the 20,000 mostly impoverished Ecuadorians who stretch the ecosystem of the archipelago well beyond its capacity. Mayor Sevilla is only 41, but he grew up on the islands before the advent of automobiles and electricity."We ate a lot of tortoises," D'Orso quotes him saying. "It was free meat, just roaming around. We didn't understand why people would want to protect the animals when God gave us the animals to eat. Even to this day, I feel this way." Which explains why the mayor lets poachers out of jail as fast as National Park Rangers arrest them.Or take Godfrey Merlen, who stumbled onto the islands in 1970 as an aimless youth working as crew on a rich man's yacht. He stayed, hung around the research station, made himself useful to field scientists, and has become a well-published, highly respected biologist in his own right without ever leaving the islands or taking an advanced degree.D'Orso keeps trying to drag his attention back to the project that brought him here: to write about the more colorful of the gringo inhabitants - the beachcombers, con artists, and barefoot philosophers. But instead, his attention keeps drifting to the real story of these islands in the 21st century. The world's educated elite prizes the Galápagos for their dramatic and unique biology. But they belong to one of the poorest, most overpopulated, and corrupt nations on earth."Banana republic" is an insufficiently scornful term to describe a political system that not long ago saw three presidencies within an hour. The trouble with Ecuador is nothing new in the world: A small number of very wealthy families manage the country for private profit.These families allow the National Park to exist, but do not, for example, allow the rangers to stop commercial fishing in park waters. The boats take everything: tuna, sea cucumbers, cor

If you want to see the Galapagos, you?ve waited too long.

Swimming with sea lions, petting giant tortoises, observing birds who have no fear of man...These Edenic images, promoted by tour companies, have led many of us to dream of traveling to the Galapagos Islands someday and walking in the footsteps of Charles Darwin. But while these images may have been true forty years ago, when small tour boats brought the first tourist-adventurers to the islands, they are far from true today. In this sad chronicle of the Galapagos, 600 miles from Ecuador, which both claims and governs them, Michael D'Orso documents the devastating changes which have taken place in the past ten years and focuses on the immediate crises of the past three years--crises which threaten the very existence of this irreplaceable natural resource. Several astute and eccentric long-time residents of the islands serve as D'Orso's first person commentators, giving him insight in to the islands' history, explaining how they have changed, and commenting on the ecological disasters now unfolding. The disasters are many, and they are getting worse, according to D'Orso. In crisp and unambiguous prose, which he sometimes wields like a truncheon, he excoriates corrupt local officials, judges, and members of the national government. Many of these, he points out, have financial interests in the oil, fishing, boating, and tourism industries, but they also want to be seen as "populist" supporters of the poor immigrants who have flooded the Galapagos looking for a piece of the tourist action. The government, he says, is "so horrifically convoluted and corrupt that onlookers have taken to calling this country 'Absurdistan.'" The introduction of non-native animal species (rats, feral dogs and cats, pigs, goats, and burros), along with foreign insect life (wasps, roaches, and fire ants), and foreign plants (blackberry, lantana, and wild guava bushes) has already permanently changed the environment on which much of the Galapagos wildlife depends. Fishing regulations are wantonly ignored, and penalties are not assessed for violations. Sea cucumbers and other marine life continue to be harvested willy-nilly; fishing boats with long-lines up to 75 miles long continue to hook and kill protected species; and rustbucket oil tankers, never inspected and often owned by highly placed public officials, carry nearly raw petroleum to the islands. They are already responsible for one major oil spill in the formerly pristine islands.Most threatening, however, is the massive influx of economic refugees from the Ecuadorian mainland who have brought the permanent population to twenty thousand (to be thirty thousand by 2010). With a lack of fresh water and adequate sanitation, and the immigrants' single-minded determination to tap into the underwater riches of the Galapagos, the ecological disaster is not just threatening--it's already happened. In a recent uprising, these immigrants physically destroyed the national park and station offices, along with the perso