From the Galapagos.
Are there lessons here for the A&N?
pankaj

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Team <timteam02@...>
To: <aiwastar@...>
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 3:26 PM
Subject: tim-team Clearinghouse: Galapagos under heavy assault


Dear colleagues and friends,

In this Clearinghouse edition, we continue our series
on World Heritage sites affected by tourism
development. The following report informs about the
Galapagos in Ecuador that are now facing a serious
environmental crisis as various industries, including
tourism, just regard the islands as a place to be
exploited for profit.

Yours truly,
Anita Pleumarom
Tourism Investigation & Monitoring Team (tim-team)

-------------------------
Information Provided by the Sea Shepherd Conservation
> Society: www.seashepherd.org/

REPORT FROM CAPTAIN PAUL WATSON ABOARD R/V FARLEY
MOWAT

ARRIVAL IN THE GALAPAGOS

The Sea Shepherd conservation research
ship Farley Mowat arrived in Puerto Ayora, Galapagos
on the morning of May 6th. As the ship was clearing
Customs and Immigration, a fishing boat passed close
by, escorted by Park rangers. On the deck were a
number of recently slaughtered Galapagos sharks.

It was a timely arrival. It was the eve of
a threatened strike by fishermen that promised more
violence against the National Park. The fishermen who
have already laid waste to entire areas of sea
cucumbers demanded an extended season to further
exploit the surviving numbers of the species. At one
dollar an animal, and with the demand climbing from
the Asian market, the sea cucumber has been under
intense pressure from exploitation for many years. As
the numbers decrease, the demand and the price
increase.

The Galapagos National Park is very much
aware of how dangerously threatened the sea cucumber
is. Each year, hundreds of thousands of these small
creatures are confiscated from poachers, unfortunately
all dead.

In preparation for the strike, the rangers
had strung up barbed wire barricades at the Park
office entrances on Santa Cruz and Isabela Islands.
Eighty fishermen marched through the streets of Puerto
Ayora on the morning of May 7th, brandishing signs and
loudly screaming through megaphones for the government
to give them what they wanted.

And what they wanted was to take more than
the biologists considered ecologically safe to take.
In fact the biologists had warned that none was too
many!

The decision was to be made at noon on the
mainland in Ecuador.

Out at anchor, the crew of the Farley
Mowat saw a large Ecuadorian tuna seiner, the Rocio
enter the bay, it came straight towards us. Her shape
was familiar, similar to the dolphin killing tuna
> seiners we have long clashed with in the Eastern
Tropical Pacific.

She circled, took aim at us and then
dropped her anchor as close as she could. Her crew
were jeering and when spying our female crewmembers
began to make obscene gestures.

According to the Park rangers, the tuna
seiners were claiming a medical emergency although we
witnessed no one being removed to shore for medical
care. One of the rangers confided in me his suspicion
that they were in the Bay to support the strikers.

At noon, the strike did not materialize.
The government in Quito had capitulated to the
fishermen?s demands without resistance and had
allocated to them the extension and the quota they
were demanding. Forty five days to loot four million
pepinos (sea cucumbers) from the sea. Despite this,
there was grumbling among the fishermen that they
should have demanded more.

On the conservation side, the feeling is
that none is too many. On the exploitation side, the
position is that four million is not enough. This
alone illustrates the vast chasm between nature
defenders and nature destroyers. And for those who say
that I reveal my bias when I call the fishermen
destroyers, I say come to the Galapagos and see for
yourself how subsistence has been replaced by
systematic plundering of the seabeds, for pepinos and
ruthless looting of the marine reserve for shark fins.

BOTH SHARKS AND SEA CUCUMBERS ARE BEING
EXTERMINATED TO SATISFY THE INSATIABLE DEMAND FOR
SHARK FIN SOUP AND SEA CUCUMBER DELICACIES IN ASIA.

The tuna seiner left Admiralty Bay later
in the afternoon but not before our crew witnessed
them smuggling a boatload of large fish ashore in the
daylight within full view of the Port Captain?s
office.

As the sun set in the evening of May 7, I
contemplated the changes that I have seen in these
islands since we first began our project in 2000.

Four years ago, the town of Puerto Ayora
was quiet, prices were low, there was one internet
caf?, and a policy that a car could only be brought to
the island if an old car was removed. Marine iguanas
sunned themselves on the sidewalk, blue footed boobies
dove into the Bay by the score, lava lizards and red
crabs scurried excitedly over the shore rocks, frigate
birds circled the town on thermals.

The first telephone was installed as
recently as 1993. Today the U.S. company, Bell South
is well established with pay phones, internet access
and cell phones.

I have watched each year as the town has
grown with migrants from the mainland arriving every
day. There are three times as many cars and trucks and
four wheel all terrain vehicles roar down the street
and into the bush. Whereas TAME airlines once flew to
the island every three days, there are three TAME
flights from and to the mainland every day.

A second airline, AeroGAL has also begun
operations to the mainland. There is no problem
finding an internet caf?, restaurants and hotels are
plentiful, and the menus boast of seafood cornucopias
ranging in diversity from shellfish, lobsters,
grouper, tuna, barracuda and shark. The hillsides of
the islands breed cattle and goats to provide the
restaurants with meat.

Last year, a record of 95,000 tourists
visited the Galapagos. The number is expected to be
greater this year.

WE ARE WITNESSING THE HAWAIIANIZATION OF
THE GALAPAGOS.

A society is evolving that has four
distinct divisions. There are those who are here to
protect the Park and the Marine Reserve and to pursue
the objectives of science. This includes the Park
rangers, the scientists at the Darwin Research Center
and representatives of non-profit organizations like
the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and WildAid.

The second group are those who are
employed in the tourist industry. This includes
licensed guides, scuba diving, guided tours,
eco-tourism boats, restaurants, hotels and internet
cafes. Amongst the guides there are two categories.
The first are the guides who are involved because of
their love and their passion for nature. The second
category are relatively new guides from the mainland
who see profit as their first priority.

The third group are the
fishermen. This group can be divided into the original
subsistence fishermen and the much larger group of
recently arrived migrants from the mainland of Ecuador
who see the islands as a temporary place to plunder
before returning to South America. It is these
fishermen who are causing the most damage to the
resident species and it is this group that is
spearheading the destruction of the Galapagos.

The fourth group is the Ecuadorian
military.

Most of the rest of the world if they
think of the Galapagos at all envision a natural
paradise populated with giant tortoises, magnificent
iguanas and unique species of birds. Many express
surprise when informed that between 20,000 and 30,000
people now live in the islands, that there are a half
a million feral goats on Isabela Island, that the baby
tortoises must be captured and raised at the Park
station until they are large enough to be returned to
the wild when the rats can no longer threaten them.

They would be surprised also at the number
of dead iguanas lying dead after attacks by domestic
dogs and cats, at the number of chickens running
around competing with wild birds for food and the
number of small birds lying dead on the roads where
hundreds are struck down every day by cars, trucks and
buses.

And they would be horrified to witness the
number of shark fins routinely confiscated from
poachers, of Galapagos seals mutilated for their
genitalia to be sold to the Asian markets, of dead
hammerhead and Galapagos sharks decomposing on the
bottom of dive sites after having their fins ripped
off while still alive and then tossed back into the
deep to die a slow death.

THE GALAPAGOS ARE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE AND
UNDER HEAVY ASSAULT BY THOSE WHO SEE THESE NCHANTED
ISLANDS AS NOTHING MORE THAN A PLACE TO BE EXPLOITED
FOR PROFIT.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has
been working to support the efforts of the Galapagos
National Park for four years now. Our contribution of
the fast patrol vessel Sirenian has led to the
intervention and capture of numerous illegal fishing
activities.

The Sirenian is supported by the patrol
vessel Guadalupe River and a third vessel the Sierra
Negro is being built to reinforce the enforcement
fleet.

But we need to do more. The Parks need
materials, equipment, law enforcement instruction and
of course - money.

The Galapagos National Park and the
Galapagos Marine Reserve are World Heritage sites and
the responsibility for the protection of these
incredible islands must be an international effort.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is
pledged to continue to devote time and funding to the
Galapagos. It is our line in the sand. If we cannot
save the Galapagos, how can we save the rest of the
world?s threatened places?

--------------------------------
NOTE: The articles introduced in this Clearinghouse do
> not necessarily represent the views of the Tourism
> Investigation & Monitoring Team (tim-team).
>
>
> =====
> tourism investigation & monitoring team (tim-team)
> P.O. Box 51 Chorakhebua
> Bangkok 10230, Thailand
> Email: timteam02@...
> Webpage: http://www.twnside.org.sg/tour.htm
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/


C/o Kalpavriksh
Apt. 5, Sri Dutta Krupa
908 Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune 411004
Tel: 020 - 25654239 / 25675450
Fax: 25654239