By: H. E. Corley Smith
hen the 20th century began there was an attitude of hopelessness among the few people who were aware of the scientific importance of the Galapagos Archipelago.The foreign whalers and sealers had ceased to be a threat as they had slaughtered so many whales, seals and giant tortoises that their industry had become unprofitable, but the survivors of the various attempts at human settlement, together with their domestic animals, were driving the native species of the islands relentlessly towards extinction. And there was no authority to prevent this tragedy.
Scientists concluded that their best course was to collect as many specimens as possible for preservation in the museums before it was too late. Around the turn of the century Lord Rothschild, using California as a base, mounted collecting expeditions for his museum at Tring in England. The California Academy of Sciences followed this initiative and collected on an even larger scale. The Academy's1905-06 expedition made the first comprehensive census of Galapagos wildlife and the fact that its team of first-rate scientists recorded only one sighting of the endemic fur seals during a year-long survey gave a hint of the impending threats to the islands´ unique wildlife. The large-scale collecting in the name of science may have made a bad situation worse but, however mistaken, these early expeditions at least exemplify the enduring interest of England and California in the Galapagos.
The pessimism persisted between the two world wars until, as the centenary of Charles Darwin's 1835 visit approached, questions began to be asked in Ecuador and elsewhere about whether the destruction of the islands´ extraordinary natural resources was indeed inevitable. In Ecuador, A Corporación Científica Nacional proposed studies with a view to promoting the protection of nature and the establishment of a scientific station. The University of Guayaquil and Misael Acosta-Solis of Quito were active in this movement. In California, the Consul of Ecuador, C.M. Egas, not only urged his government to enact conservation legislation but also recruited the support of influential individuals and institutions such as Harry S. Swarth of the California Academy of Sciences, Robert T. Moore of the California Institute of Technology and Harold J. Coolidge of the International Wildlife Committee.
A separate initiative, which stimulated interest both in Ecuador and Europe, was the "Charles Darwin Memorial Expedition", organized and led by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen. The party sailed from Guayaquil and erected a monument to Darwin on the shore of San Cristóbal Island, where the young naturalist had landed exactly a hundred years previously. Von Hagen later carried his message to the United Kingdom, where Julian Huxley promoted the London Galapagos Committee, on which the Royal Society, the British Association and other leading scientific bodies were represented. The committee proposed to raise £100, 000 to endow a research station in the islands but this had still not been achieved when war in Europe broke out in 1939. In the United States efforts nevertheless continued and in 1941 Waldo Schmidt of the Smithsonian Institution actually went to the islands with the enthusiastic approval of President Roosevelt, who was deeply interested in the Galapagos, which he had visited in 1938. The object of the expedition was to set up a laboratory and meteorological station on South Seymour Island (Baltra) but Pearl Harbour intervened and instead of a research station the United States built an air base. Its construction was later to prove of critical importance in the story of the Galapagos.
One thread running through these diverse proposals was that the archipelago needed both legal protection for its wildlife and a scientific research station. Unfortunately there was little or no co-ordination between the various initiatives.The government enacted forward-looking legislation, listing areas that were to be considered as wildlife sanctuaries and forbidding the killing of certain species; but there was no administration in the sparsely populated archipelago capable of implementing these laws. For their part, the international scientists never got together to organize a non-governmental association, which could have provided a partial substitute for a national authority. In the 1930´s the need for conservation was scarcely appreciated even by scientists.Few countries had created national parks and, with no national or international body capable of dealing with the Galapagos problem, the degradation continued. Another quarter of a century was to pass before effective action was taken.