By: H. E. Corley Smith
With the initial building programme virtually complete, the next Director could devote more of his attention to specific conservation projects. Perry inherited from Snow the services of a full time conservation officer, Miguel Castro, a wildlife enthusiast born in the islands, and the Foundation was also able to provide him with an elderly research vessel, piously named Beagle II and captained by Carl Angermeyer, who had a long experience of the archipelago's treacherous waters. This combination of advantages gave the CDRS greater mobility and allowed a more extensive exploration of the scattered islands and a more reliable assessment of their fauna and flora than had previously been possible.The staff was further strengthened by the appointment of Tjitte de Vries as resident ecologist and of Rolf D. Sievers as station manager.
Human interference was still considered the main threat to the ecosystems. Perry continued Snow's efforts to protect the Santa Cruz tortoises as one of the two remaining populations that seemed capable of perpetuating themselves, but there was considerable local opposition, as some residents wanted the "strict reserve" opened up to cattle ranching. In co-operation with Lucio Saltos Gomez, the supervisor of primary education in the archipelago, Perry organized natural history lessons in the local schools and gave courses in biology and conservation for teachers and officials. By such means, further progress was made in reconciling local opinion with the idea of conservation and this reduced resentment at what must have appeared to the islanders an unwarranted intrusion by foreign scientists. Human predation on wildlife slowly declined.
Tortoise surveys eventually covered the whole archipelago, and although it was found that 10 of the original 14 or 15 races still survived, only those on Santa Cruz Island and the Alcedo volcano were believed capable of sustaining themselves indefinitely without active support. Apart from direct human interference, the rats, pigs and dogs that man had introduced, preyed on the eggs and young, while goats ravaged the vegetation on which the tortoises fed. On Pinzon Island there was a small but vigorous breeding population but none apparently under 40 years of age, as the rats were killing off every hatchling: with no young reaching breeding age, the extinction of the Pinzon race was merely a question of time.As an experiment, a number of tortoise eggs were dug up in 1965, taken to the station and incubated in converted bird cages. When, by trial and error, a hundred young had been successfully raised, Perry decided to extend the programme to include all the endangered races, each to be bred pure with no crossing. This was facilitated by the support of the San Diego Zoological Society, which, surprised and impressed by a hatching success much greater than that of its own professionals, generously provided the CDRS with funds for a purpose-built rearing centre. When the Pinzon tortoises were about 5 years old, they were considered strong enough to stand up to the rats and were returned to their home island.
Different protective measures had to be devised to meet the peculiar threats to each of the endangered tortoise races. The menace of extinction was particularly acute for the race on Española. Although there were no introduced predator son this arid island, the tortoise population was extremely small and the naturally scanty vegetation was further reduced by large herds of introduced goats. Either because of malnutrition or because the few surviving tortoises were so scattered that male and female never met, there was no evidence of any Española tortoises breeding during the previous half-century. So Perry collected the few survivors he could find, one male and three females, and transported them to the CDRS where, confined in a corral and copiously fed, they eventually bred. Further searches in the end increased the breeding stock to two males and ten females. Again by trial and error, hatching success was finally achieved in 1969and the otherwise doomed race of Geochelone elephantopus hoodensis was given a chance of survival. From 1969 to 1973 the tortoise preservation programme had expert guidance from the herpetologist, Craig MacFarland, who later became Director of the CDRS and then President of the CDF.
When Roger Perry took over the direction of the CDRS the basic agreement between the Darwin Foundation and the Government of Ecuador had been signed but there remained large areas of uncertainty about its implementation. For instance, no boundaries of the proposed National Park had been defined; new colonists still occupied land without permission; and there were schemes to settle and farm the large and scientifically important island of Santiago and to develop sulphur mines in the uninhabited but ecologically outstanding parts of Isabela. The Ecuadorian authorities asked the British Ambassador whether the United Kingdom, which had experience with the planning of national parks in its dependent territories, could offer advice about the Galapagos park under its Overseas Development programme.This was readily agreed and in 1965 a small mission was sent consisting of Ian Grimwood, a noted expert on national parks, and the recent CDRS Director, David Snow, who possessed unrivalled local experience. Their report, presented to President Yerovi in 1966, was entitled "Recommendations on the Administration of the proposed Galapagos National Park and the Development of its Tourist Potential". Among the report's key recommendations were:
- That a National Park Service should be established.
- That the boundaries of the National Park should be speedily and clearly defined.
- That there should be a protected marine zone 1000 metres wide surrounding the park's boundaries.
- That tours by ship should be organized with the visitors sleeping on board.
- That tourists, when going on shore, should be accompanied by trained guides.
By the time Perry left, much of this programme had been carried out. In 1968 the nucleus of a Galapagos National Park Service (GNPS) had been formed under the control of the Forestry Service of the Ministry of Agriculture. The GNPS was housed for the time being with the CDRS and used its facilities. This had the advantage of building a close relationship between the GNPS and the CDRS as well as bringing to the conservation programme the authority of the sovereign government, which an international scientific body could not and should not exercise.The local co-operation between the CDRS and the GNPS was paralleled by the fruitful relationship between Perry and Pablo Rosero of the Forestry Service in Quito.
The arrival of the first members of the GNPS, Juan Black and José Villa, was very timely as regular trips to the Galapagos were being planned by travel companies, which meant the beginning of an organized tourist industry. Both the Grimwood-Snow report and the United Nations´ office in Quito considered that the prospect of a tourist industry was a highly desirable if not an essential factor in promoting support for conservation. There were however serious doubt sin official quarters whether the very specialized tourism that the wild Galapagos could offer would be commercially viable. Nobody at all foresaw the speed with which tourists would be attracted, whether to the Galapagos or eventually to continental Ecuador.
Between 1969 and 1970 the boundaries of the National Park were drawn by a commission from the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización (IERAC).These boundaries corresponded very closely with those recommended in 1966 by the CDF and thus amply fulfilled the Foundation's hopes so far as the land areaways concerned. Some 97% of the land - 3, 000 square miles - was declared to be a National Park, including the whole of the controversial island of Santiago, where all individual property rights were extinguished. There were to be no residents, private property or developments outside the clearly defined and limited areas of settlement, though for the next few years squatters continued to encroach on the National Park boundaries on Santa Cruz. The Commission's adjudications gave much satisfaction to the GNPS and the CDRS and the looming threats of land speculation, cattle raising, mining and the development of recreational facilities within the National Park were averted.
The only omission was that no steps were taken to establish a protected marine zone, but thanks to the co-operation between the CDRS, the GNPS and the National Institute of Fisheries, little harm was done and twenty years later the whole internal waters of the archipelago were declared a reserve, not just the 1000metre zone proposed in the Grimwood-Snow report.
As the report's recommendation that all visits to the National Park should be by ship with the visitors sleeping on board was adopted in practice, no accommodation on shore within the park was necessary. The modest hotels, restaurants and other tourist facilities that have since grown up have been confined to the relatively small settlement areas. (Even the CDRS and GNPS buildings are situated outside the National Park boundaries). Thus conservation problems arising from tourist visits were reduced in scale and character. At first the larger cruise ships were foreign-based (particularly those operated by Lars Landlady, an early supporter of Galapagos conservation) but gradually the traffic was taken over by national vessels based in Guayaquil or in the archipelago itself.
Perry had a natural bent for exploration and, aided by Castro, Harris, Sievers, De Vries and the growing number of visiting scientists, he greatly increased the Station's knowledge of the islands and their flora and fauna. During his six-years' residence, fears of direct human threats to the environment began to take second place to concern at the damage caused by the feral animals man had introduced. In the later years of his tenure he had a surprising amount of good news to report to the Foundation's precarious finances. At times there was no cash to pay either CDRS or GNPS wages and Perry himself served unpaid for his last year. CDF finances were on a hand to mouth basis. Ship maintenance is a constant problem in the Galapagos and there were no reserves on which to draw to take the elderly Beagle II to the mainland for an overhaul. In the end, for lack of maintenance, the CDF's first research vessel became unfit for navigation and had to be dismantled and sunk. The CDRS lost mobility for a considerable period and the Foundation was faced with the uphill task of raising funds to pay for the purpose-built Beagle III, a steel-hull ship specifically designed for the Station's purposes.
As the archipelago is one of the world's most active volcanic regions, eruptions are frequent. One of unusual violence occurred on 11 June 1968 when the floor of the volcano Fernandina's caldera, already 800 metres below its 1, 500 metre rim, dropped a further 300 metres. This was the world's second biggest caldera collapse since that of Krakatoa in 1883. A CDRS team led by Roger Perry reached the rim on 19 June and a party of geologists, led by Tom Simkin of the Smithsonian Institution, investigated the tectonic event 10-13 July.