Conservation management is constantly changing. It is never exactly the same from year to year, nor from place to place. While there are common themes and challenges – and successes, what works in one place and time may not work in another.
CDF and its partners are well positioned to determine what is best for the conservation of the biodiversity of Galapagos. Generally, any management approach should be sustainable, adaptive, cost-effective, and of course, successful.
Experimental management is learning by doing — trying new management techniques in the field, often on a large scale, and closely monitoring their effects, both on the target, whether it be an invasive or a threatened species, as well as on non-target elements of the ecosystem, such as native plant and animal communities.
Experimental management is directed at priority problems, such as the quinine tree, but also at potential future problems, such as garden ornamentals that are only just beginning to escape into the wild, trying to deal with them before they turn into major and expensive ecological disasters.
© CDF Novel goat eradication techniques included the use of 'Judas goats' with radio transmitters.Many of our experimental management projects are ground-breaking, such as eradicating goats from the largest islands in the world on which this has been attempted, or calculating the cost of attempting to eradicate quinine — an invasive plant spread over 12,000 ha.
Quinine Tree
The quinine tree (Cinchona pubescens) is one of the most serious alien plant invaders in Galapagos, having spread into all the highland vegetation zones of Santa Cruz Island. So how should such a well-established, widely-distributed invader be eradicated?
Quinine - Cinchona pubescens
CDRS has carried out a series of studies of the quinine problem, to investigate the biology of this alien invader, its impact on the local ecology, and how best to control it. After ten years of previous attempts, in 2000, control trials identified an effective combination of control techniques, including hand-pulling of young plants, and “hack-and-squirt” for larger trees, where herbicide is applied into machete cuts on the trunk. These techniques are now used for routine control by the Galapagos National Park.
CDRS botanists have determined the costs of using these methods in different areas with different densities of quinine trees. All these studies have provided results that feed into a model to calculate the effort required to attempt the elimination of all quinine trees from Santa Cruz with a high probability of success, and the cost of such an attempt. With this information , a long-term management plan for Cinchona pubescens can now be established.