Climbing the volcano in San Cristobal - "El Junco". The inactive volcano crater is the largest fresh water lake in the Galapagos and provides the town with its drinking water, which is much better than the other towns in the archipelago. I walked its circumference in 30 minutes.
After considerable effort by the national park to remove the invasive species of guava trees and blackberry bushes, which have overwhelmed the islands and destroyed tortoise habitat, the area around the volcano is back to native vegetation. It's ironic that fruit can do so much damage!
From Wikipedia:
The shape of the carapace of some subspecies of the tortoises is said to have reminded the early Spanish explorers of a kind of saddle they called a "galápago," and for these saddle-shaped tortoises they named the archipelago. Up to 250,000 tortoises inhabited the islands when they were discovered. Today only about 15,000 are left.
A noted visitor to the archipelago, naturalist Charles Darwin, remarked "These animals grow to an immense size ... several so large that it required six or eight men to lift them from the ground." [3] This is due to the phenomenon of island gigantism whereby in the absence of natural predation, the largest tortoises had a survival advantage and no disadvantage in fleeing or fending off predators.
This sign at the Galapaguera shows how they brought tortoises in 2002 from their natural habitat in the far north of the island to Puerto Baquerizo (by boat) and then to the breeding center at Cerro Colorado (by truck). The breeding program run by the Charles Darwin Foundation and the National Park has succesfully re-introduced hundreds of captive-bred juveniles back into the wild, helping tortoise populations to recover.
Puerto Chino, at the end of the road.
No comments:
Post a Comment