Why it is in news?

• The 650-berth cruise ship the Discovery sets sail across the Pacific Ocean en route to the Galapagos Islands, the world's best-preserved tropical archipelago.
• When it reaches this isolated rabble of volcanic islands in just over one month's time, it will set a worrying precedent.
• The Discovery will become the largest tourist vessel operating in the Galapagos, carrying over five times as many passengers as any other.
• This trend towards large-scale tourism is pushing out small, local operators, says Mr. Watkins.
• What is more, it could herald the arrival of other similar vessels, increasing the pressure that tourism is placing on this world heritage site.

Rising numbers

• In the late 1980s, the annual number of visitors to the islands was about 40,000.
• Last year, that figure reached 100,000.
• The arrival of the Discovery, which plans to pass through the islands twice a year, suggests that this upward trend will continue.
• The local population has grown at a similar pace.
• The last census, in 2001, reckoned the permanent population to be more than 18,000.
• It is now the fastest growing province of Ecuador, and 27,000 people may be crammed into the 3 per cent of the islands that is not designated as a national park.
• This figure is set to double in the next seven to 12 years.

Increasing strain

• As the population expands, the strain on natural resources increases.
• "There is greater demand for construction materials, fresh water and energy. Perhaps most important, outsiders coming to the archipelago rarely come with a conservation mindset and find it difficult to understand the realities of island living..
• If the population boom continues, the islands could soon be beyond saving.
• Since the first efforts to conserve the Galapagos in 1959, the problems have changed dramatically.
• Then, the challenges were largely biological, such as working out the conditions to breed giant tortoises in captivity or limiting the damage caused by introduced species such as the goat.
• These problems do not go away, but the relentless marketing of the Galapagos as the world's premier eco-tourism destination has contributed to a new set of social challenges

New approach needed

• The only future for conserving the Galapagos is one in which all the different human interests on the islands work closely together.
• Biologists can no longer work in isolation, advising park managers on what makes scientific sense.
• They have begun to open up and communicate more effectively with other interests in the archipelago
• This is a real challenge for many scientists. If you're doing straight, old-style conservation biology, you're dealing with animals. They're not very predictable but a lot more predictable than people."
• Since the early 1990s, there has been a tension between the needs of conservation and the needs of the local people.
• At the height of hostilities in 1995, disgruntled fishermen levelled death threats at Lonesome George, the only surviving giant tortoise from one of the islands, a huge tourist draw and something of a poster-boy for the conservation enterprise.
• But the Special Law of Galapagos, passed in 1998, signalled a new era of cooperation between the different interests on the islands
• Among much else, the Special Law created the Galapagos Marine Reserve, a protected area around the islands and put in place a joint management participatory board, or "junta" as it is known locally, to manage it.
• This brought scientists, park managers, fishermen, tourism industry representatives and professional guides around the same table for the first time.
• The junta has had successes. All parties agreed on a calendar of when commercial species can and cannot be fished, and a provisional zoning scheme for the marine reserve, which identifies who can do what and where.
• But the junta did not produce new business for the fishermen soon enough, dissatisfaction resurfaced and the fishermen pulled out
• To complicate matters, there have been 11 directors of Galapagos National Park Service in the past two years.

Source

The Hindu