Biodiversity Conservation in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador: experiences, Lessons Learned, and Policy Implications.
C Josh Donlan... [et al.].
- 2013.
- 20 p.
Invasive alien mammals are the major driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation on islands. Over the past three decades, invasive mammal eradication from islands has become one of society’s most powerful tools for preventing extinctions of insular endemics and restoring insular ecosystems. A number of innovative programs have recently taken place in the Americas that have focused on restoring and protecting islands. Project Isabela in the Galapagos Islands is the world’s largest island restoration program to date. It was the largest component of a holistic approach to invasive alien species management in the Galápagos Islands. Project Isabela removed >140,000 goats from Pinta, Santiago, and northern Isabela Islands (>500,000 ha) for a cost of US$10.5 million. Leveraging the capacity built during Project Isabela, and given that goat reintroductions have been common over the past decade, an archipelago-wide goat eradication strategy was implemented. Feral goats remain on three islands in the archipelago, and removal efforts are underway. Efforts on the Galápagos Islands demonstrate that for some species, island size is no longer the limiting factor with respect to eradication. Rather, bureaucratic processes, financing, political will, and stakeholder approval appear to be the new challenges. Eradication efforts have delivered a suite of biodiversity benefits that are in the process of revealing themselves. The costs of rectifying intentional reintroductions are high in terms of financial and human resources. Reducing the archipelago-wide goat density to low levels is a technical approach to reducing reintroduction risk in the short-term, and is being complemented with a longer-term social approach focused on education and governance.