By: H. E. Corley Smith
Funded by UNESCO, a young Swiss ornithologist, Raymond Lévêque, was appointed Director and charged with the construction of a research station on Santa Cruz Island. Like all his successors, he was a scientist and he had little experience of the technical side of this daunting task. At CDF headquarters in Europe there was enormous ignorance about conditions in the Galapagos and some of Lévêque´s instructions proved unworkable. Communications between Santa Cruz and the mainland were infrequent, irregular and always slow, so he had to take his own decisions. He soon discovered that wood was vulnerable to termites and he had to build with blocks of lava and concrete despite instructions to the contrary. He decided to establish the station at Academy Bay instead of Tortuga Bay, which he considered an impractical site for logistic reasons.With the help of the United Nations Andean Mission, he imported a team of building workers from the continent and organized the purchase and transport of the cement, metal, glass and other materials that were not available in the islands. He was fortunate in recruiting a resourceful station manager, Edgard Pots, whose help in the actual building operations was invaluable. Everything was lacking.here was no wharf to unload supplies, no roads across the arid stretch of cactus and scrub to the building site, no water supply and no electricity. All these basic services had to be organized. In spite of the difficulties and delays, a laboratory and a workshop were roughly finished when, due to failing health, Lévêque had to leave. In addition to overseeing the building operations, he had managed to do some preliminary investigation of the ecology of the archipelago. He began to compile a herbarium and even took the first step in controlling the destructive feral animals by eliminating the goats on little South Plaza Island.
Lévêque was very much on his own but he did receive an encouraging visit from Victor Van Straelen and Peter Scott in 1961. They had been in Quito to win the support of President Velasco Ibarra for the development of a National Park. Scott already knew the islands as he had been there in 1959 to make a film for the British Broadcasting Corporation and so was well qualified to explain the urgent need for conservation. Van Straelen, with his prestige as founder of the Congo National Park, deeply impressed the President of the Republic and thus effectively won at the highest level national co-operation with the Darwin Foundation's scheme. The former U.S. airfield on Baltra Island, though rarely used, was still operational and the President lent the little mission his official plane, which made it possible for them to visit the islands. During their brief stay, Van Straelen and Scott sorted out the administrative problems of the embryonic station, such as budget, buildings, supplies and equipment. While these two pioneers were naturally ambitious to promote science and conservation in the Galapagos, they can hardly have hoped at that time for success on the scale that was eventually achieved.