Eight Galapagos tortoises poached

This Tuesday, Galapagos National Park officials announced that eight giant tortoises were found killed by poachers. There are only 7,000 giant tortoises left, so this is quite a blow. Even worse, some of those found dead had been painstakingly hatched from artificially incubated eggs and raised for seven years by scientists before being released into their natural habitat ...only to be slaughtered eight years later by poachers.

A tragedy, yes, but also a call to arms for local educators. Only someone who doesn't understand the value of the Galapagos flora and fauna to science and history--not to mention the Galapagos economy--would commit such an act simply to sell a few hunks of bush meat on the black market.

This just goes to show that the Galapagos Archipelago really is a "World Heritage Site In Danger" and may even lose its UNESCO World Heritage Site status as a result.

Want to help? Why not link over to the Galapagos Conservation Trust and find out how.

Galapagos flora and fauna under threat.

This NASA image of the Galapagos archipelago from space reinforces a perception of the island chain as a precious jewel. Indeed, common knowledge tells us that the Galapagos Islands enjoy strict environmental protections. Au contraire, reports the Beeb. Even though the islands were have been a World Heritage Site for 30 years, Galapagos plants and animals are facing "'huge institutional, environmental and social crises' ... as a result of neglect by previous governments". Vigilance, folks, vigilance.

The Darwin Online website

is a truly fantastic resource: Darwin's papers, notebooks, letters and manuscripts online. Free and searchable. Treat yourself to a browse here. The field notebooks are Charles Darwin's on-the-spot records of what he saw, recorded and collected. From these we know that the first specimen collected by Darwin when Beagle made landfall was:

Eel dark reddish purplish brown with pale or whitish brown spots. Eyes Bluish. Darwin had caught a Jewel Moray Eel.

Then:
Saturday left our anchorage & stood out to outside of Island, did not anchor
(Sunday) Continued to beat to windward...

Brief, but vivid and straight from the mind of the great man. From the Galapagos, Otahaite, Lima notebook (1835) Beagle field notebook EH1.17, page 17b.