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Location & Field Conditions
This project takes place far out in the Pacific Ocean, 1,000 Km off shore from Ecuador. The islands are part of Ecuador and Spanish is the main language spoken. Our project partner on the Galápagos is the Jatun Sacha Foundation, Ecuador's foremost conservation organisation. The tasks we are involved with include:
This hands-on project will appeal to people who have an interest in the environment and who enjoy practical conservation. The tasks are un-glamorous, the work is dirty and the conditions are hot beneath the tropical sun. The working conditions are made a little harder in the months of August and September when it's just as hot, but the summer rains can make everything wet and muddy too. The heavy rains come in the first quarter of the year. Nearest Town: James writes: “Puerto Ayora is a great little town; it has some sea-front bars and is good fun as well as having internet access and shops. We went out and about in the town during several evenings which was great and is very different from some of the 'remote' projects I have done in the Andes.” Background: The three most common offenders are blackberry (Rubus ursinus), quinine (Cinchona pubescens) and guava (Feijoa sellowiana). All three were brought to the islands in the 1940's, for tragically simple reasons. For example, blackberry bushes were probably brought because someone had a particular liking for the fruit. The blackberry is a particularly vigorous plant, with few natural predators. It soon escaped from the garden where it was first planted in the Galapagos, and decimates everything in its path. Indigenous plants are good at surviving oceanic conditions and can thrive with little water, but they aren't good at competing with vigorous "new comers". Areas which were once pristine Scalesia forest are now impenetrable jungles of nothing but blackberry, twenty feet high! Bad news, not just for the Scalesia, but the host of other plants that grew upon the forest floor: worse news still for the birds and animals who live in Scalesia groves such as the Giant Tortoise and Galapagos finches, who are unable to survive the loss of their natural habitat. The only practical way to cure the problem is to roll your sleeves up, sharpen your machete and wage war on the blackberry. Once cut, it soon dries in the sun and can be burnt, the ash helping to enrich the soil with phosphates. But blackberries are tenacious little "tryphids" and must be re-cut year after year (latest estimates are for eight consecutive years!) before the blackberry is actually killed. The first cut is the most difficult, in subsequent years it is a great deal easier. Once an area is cleared it is replanted with Scalesia which take very well, once the blackberry competition is removed. In 2005 we carried out our first trial on Santa Cruz Island and cleared a five Ha site (an area about as big as five football pitches). At that time, no finches or tortoises had been seen on that land for many years. The cleared and re-planted land was also fenced with barbed wire, to keep cattle and horses away from the young trees. Just twelve months later, during the March '06 hot, dry season, four Giant Tortoises were recorded that had safely passed beneath the wire fence, through the Scalesia grove to a dew-pond, to drink. Remarkably, these slow but powerful grazers didn't even attempt to touch the young trees! It took five people, three weeks to clear the land in ‘05; it now takes one person an afternoon to walk around and stay on top of blackberry re-growth. As the trees thrive and grow, birds begin to return as well as forest floor plants. Slowly, the balance can be redressed.
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