Santiago Island
It is wonderful and appropriate that our week’s voyage here in Galápagos should end with a visit to Santiago. This is the island that Lindblad Expeditions and our Polaris guests have “adopted” and we play an important part in funding the National Park’s efforts to restore and preserve it. Humans inhabited Santiago in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and brought with them an array of domestic mammals. Introduced pigs, goats and donkeys have overrun the island for more than 100 years. Goats are especially destructive and numbering over 60,000 individuals they have ravaged and destroyed the island’s unique vegetation to the point that the Park has fenced off representative sections in an attempt to conserve native and endemic plants species.
The visitor’s site, at Puerto Egas in South James Bay, is on the northwestern shore of this large island. With a surface area of 226 square miles this is the 4th largest island in the Archipelago. Puerto Egas is a lovely area of black sand beaches, eroded tuff cliffs, and lava tunnels and grottos that reach the shore and are filled with the indigo sea. We had a big swell running in from the north so disembarkation on the black sand beach today was exciting and a bit wet. Everyone who disembarked on this cool, damp afternoon greatly enjoyed the last swim and walk along this beautiful and dynamic coast.
While our guests took some final photos of posing sea lions, utterly nonchalant and perfectly still marine iguanas, or the ubiquitous and gaudy, brilliant red sally lightfoot crabs, they heard an unusual sound: the throb of a helicopter. The Lindblad staff explained that the National Park Service is in its final phase of goat eradication on Santiago. With two helicopter teams to support the ground hunters, we are confident that by the end of this month the tens of thousands of goats that have denuded Santiago and devastated this fragile ecosystem will be gone. Feral pigs were eradicated from Santiago a few years ago and both of these projects are among those supported by Lindblad and our guests.
Once Santiago is free of these destructive alien grazers, the tough, local, ground based hunters and trained hunting dogs will be transferred to the much larger island of Isabela, to continue their labours. Eradicating feral animals from islands like Santiago and Isabela where there are both impenetrable, dense forests in the highlands and many square miles of treacherous lava flows, is extremely difficult. However, the National Park has a well thought out plan that is progressing as they had hoped. In today’s photo we see the helicopter in the midst of a lava flow where the pilots are fueling up from one of many jerry cans they have strategically place about the island. We are well on the road to saving these marvelous islands for future generations.
It is wonderful and appropriate that our week’s voyage here in Galápagos should end with a visit to Santiago. This is the island that Lindblad Expeditions and our Polaris guests have “adopted” and we play an important part in funding the National Park’s efforts to restore and preserve it. Humans inhabited Santiago in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and brought with them an array of domestic mammals. Introduced pigs, goats and donkeys have overrun the island for more than 100 years. Goats are especially destructive and numbering over 60,000 individuals they have ravaged and destroyed the island’s unique vegetation to the point that the Park has fenced off representative sections in an attempt to conserve native and endemic plants species.
The visitor’s site, at Puerto Egas in South James Bay, is on the northwestern shore of this large island. With a surface area of 226 square miles this is the 4th largest island in the Archipelago. Puerto Egas is a lovely area of black sand beaches, eroded tuff cliffs, and lava tunnels and grottos that reach the shore and are filled with the indigo sea. We had a big swell running in from the north so disembarkation on the black sand beach today was exciting and a bit wet. Everyone who disembarked on this cool, damp afternoon greatly enjoyed the last swim and walk along this beautiful and dynamic coast.
While our guests took some final photos of posing sea lions, utterly nonchalant and perfectly still marine iguanas, or the ubiquitous and gaudy, brilliant red sally lightfoot crabs, they heard an unusual sound: the throb of a helicopter. The Lindblad staff explained that the National Park Service is in its final phase of goat eradication on Santiago. With two helicopter teams to support the ground hunters, we are confident that by the end of this month the tens of thousands of goats that have denuded Santiago and devastated this fragile ecosystem will be gone. Feral pigs were eradicated from Santiago a few years ago and both of these projects are among those supported by Lindblad and our guests.
Once Santiago is free of these destructive alien grazers, the tough, local, ground based hunters and trained hunting dogs will be transferred to the much larger island of Isabela, to continue their labours. Eradicating feral animals from islands like Santiago and Isabela where there are both impenetrable, dense forests in the highlands and many square miles of treacherous lava flows, is extremely difficult. However, the National Park has a well thought out plan that is progressing as they had hoped. In today’s photo we see the helicopter in the midst of a lava flow where the pilots are fueling up from one of many jerry cans they have strategically place about the island. We are well on the road to saving these marvelous islands for future generations.
