Galapagos dropped from UNESCO endangered list

Yahoo News 28 Jul 10;

BRASILIA (AFP) – UNESCO's World Heritage Committee said Wednesday it has removed Ecuador's Galapagos Islands from its list of endangered sites, due to Quito's protective efforts in the Pacific archipelago.

"By a vote of 14 to five, with one abstention," the committee removed the islands from its endangered environments list, where it was included in 2007, said Brazil's Culture Ministry, which presides over this week's committee meeting in Brasilia.

"It's important to recognize the Ecuadoran government's effort in protecting and preserving this heritage site," Brazilian Heritage Institute president Luiz Fernando de Almeida said in a statement.

Brazil had requested that the Galapagos be removed from the endangered list.

Located 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) west of Ecuador's coast, the Galapagos archipelago of 13 main islands and 17 islets has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978 for its rich plant and animal life both on land and in the surrounding sea.

In 2007, the organization declared the island chain's environment endangered due to the increase of tourism and the introduction of invasive species.

Some 10,000 people, mostly fishermen, live on the volcanic archipelago, which rose from the Pacific seabed 10 million years ago and became famous when Darwin visited to conduct research in 1835.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's List of World Heritage in Danger includes 31 cultural or natural sites around the globe at imminent risk of degradation or destruction.

The 34th annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee this year takes place in the Brazilian capital from July 25 to August 3.

Galapagos removal from endangered list 'premature': body
Yahoo News 29 Jul 10;

BRASILIA (AFP) – A body which gives conservation advice to UNESCO on Thursday criticized the removal of the Galapagos islands from the UN agency's list of endangered world heritage, calling it hasty.

"The removal of this unique site of global importance to humanity is somewhat premature," the head of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Julia Marton-Lefevre, said.

"Threats from tourism, invasive species and overfishing are still factors and the situation in the Galapagos remains critical," added Tim Badman, who heads the IUCN's World Heritage Program.

The IUCN gives official advice to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, which in a meeting in Brasilia on Wednesday decided to strike Galapagos from its endangered sites list, on which it was entered in 2007.

The move, made at Brazil's request, was meant to reflect the progress the Ecuadoran government had made in protecting its archipelago, which was made famous by evolution theorist Charles Darwin who studied its fauna in 1835.

The committee voted 14 to five to remove the islands from the list, with one abstention, according to the Brazilian culture ministry which presided over the meeting.

Badman said that, while "we recognize the major efforts of the Ecuadoran government to rectify the situation there.. IUCN's recommendation for the Galapagos was that it should not be removed from the Danger List as there is work still to be done."

Located 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) west of Ecuador's coast, the Galapagos archipelago of 19 islands and more than 100 islets and rocky outcrops has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978 for the rich plant and animal life found both on its land and in the surrounding sea.

In 2007, the organization declared the island chain's environment endangered due to the increase of tourism and the introduction of invasive species.

Some 10,000 people, mostly fishermen, live on the volcanic archipelago, which rose from the Pacific seabed 10 million years ago and became famous when Darwin visited to conduct research in 1835.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's List of World Heritage in Danger includes 31 cultural or natural sites around the globe at imminent risk of degradation or destruction.

The 34th annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee this year is taking place in the Brazilian capital from July 25 to August 3.

Fears for unique wildlife of Galapagos as UN drops islands' protected status
Scientists condemn 'premature' removal of world heritage listing

Michael McCarthy, The Independent 29 Jul 10;

A panel of politicians has voted to remove the Galapagos Islands from the UN's list of World Heritage Sites in danger – in spite of a firm recommendation from scientists and officials who visited the islands that they should keep their status.

The Pacific archipelago, whose unique wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution were included on the list in 2007 after scientists warned they were facing environmental disaster from mass tourism, immigration, development, overfishing and the invasion of alien species.

Following a visit in April, a group of UN scientists raised concerns that port facilities in Ecuador, to whom the islands belong, and Galapagos were still not sufficiently bio-secure to prevent more alien species such as plants, fungi and even diseases being transported from mainland South America to the islands.

They also raised new concerns about the sport fishing industry which is taking off in Galapagos without a proper regulatory framework, and recommended the islands remain on the danger list. However, on Wednesday the politicians, members of the World Heritage Committee of Unesco, the UN's cultural body, ignored them, and in effect gave Galapagos a clean bill of health.

Last night Toni Darton, director of Britain's Galapagos Conservation Trust, the principal charity supplying environmental backup to the islands' national park and Charles Darwin research foundation, said: "We are very concerned by this decision and its implications. It is premature. It suggests the islands are out of danger and they are not. They are still in danger, absolutely."

There were 40 species on the islands whose conservation status was "critically endangered," Mrs Darton said.

The archipelago, 600 miles off Ecuador's coast, the first location to be declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco 30 years ago, is remarkable for its endemic wildlife which has developed over millions of years in isolation and includes giant tortoises, marine iguanas, flightless cormorants and 13 separate species of finch.

After visiting the islands in 1835, Charles Darwin realised that these 13 separate species had probably originated in a single species that had arrived on the islands from the South American mainland many thousands of years earlier, and as a direct result began to conceive his theory of evolution by natural selection.

In recent years the islands have become increasingly popular as a tourist destination, and the influx of tourists, combined with immigration from the mainland, has resulted in growing environmental threats. The population has grown from 2,000 people in 1960 to more than 30,000 now.

Although the World Heritage Committee put the islands on its danger list only three years ago, they were removed from the list by the committee at its meeting in Brazil's capital Brasilia. The panel of 21 states, which has a rotating membership and currently does not include the UK, voted 15-4 to delist Galapagos, at the instigation of Brazil, and after hearing an appeal from the environment minister of Ecuador.

"Although the Ecuadorian government has taken significant steps to make Galapagos a national priority for conservation, it is too early for these to have any real impact," said Mrs Darton. "Saving Galapagos is a marathon, not a sprint."

Island wonders

Marine Iguana

One of the iconic species of Galapagos, the marine iguana, Amblyrhynchus cristatus, is found nowhere else in the world and is unique among lizards in that it can live and hunt for food (much of it kelp) in the sea, with the ability to dive down to depths of 30ft. It has spread to all the islands in the archipelago where it lives mainly on rocky shores, although it can also be found in marshes and mangrove beaches.

Flightless Cormorant

The flightless cormorant, Phalacrocorax harrisi, also known as the Galapagos cormorant, is another unique species in that it is the only cormorant which has lost the ability to fly. There are only 1,500 birds in the population, which makes it one of the rarest birds in the world, and it is the subject of an active conservation programme.

Giant Tortoise

Weighing as much as 660lbs, and up to 4ft long, the Galapagos giant tortoise, Geochelone nigra, is the biggest tortoise in the world, and one of the planet's longest-lived organisms with a life expectancy in the wild estimated at up to 150 years. Its numbers have dramatically fallen since the islands were discovered because of hunting and the introduction of predators, but a captive breeding programme has been very successful and has now released hundreds of juveniles back into the wild on their home islands.