This past school year I began looking into different service trips for teens with my friend Elli. She stumbled across one that takes students to the Galapagos Islands and immediately my interest was peaked. Obviously, the Galapagos Islands are a staple on every nature lovers bucket list, and they have been on mine since I was in sixth grade. I did some more investigation, and before I knew it, I was walking through the airport alone about to begin the journey of a lifetime.
My time in Ecuador was indescribable and beyond comparable to any trip I’ve ever been on in my entire life. I did several hours worth of community service, both helping the endemic animals on the island as well as the people who live there, but all of the service centralized around the idea of protecting the unique environment. While in the islands, I learned so much about the habitats and species found there as well as the environmental risks the islands face.
The Galapagos Islands have a fascinating history and are incredibly important to what we know today about natural selection and evolution. The islands are very young in comparison to every other landmass on Earth and are home to plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Charles Darwin conducted his famous study on the theory of evolution on the islands, documenting all the types of finches found there and the different shapes of their beaks. He related this to what type of food was available in the different places they lived and that they all came from one like species. His studies successfully proved his theory of evolution and ultimately changed the course of modern biology.
On the islands, I worked at a tortoise sanctuary cutting down invasive tree species and moving the branches and leaves to form a wall that would stop tortoises from walking into the road. With my group, we planted over fifty endemic trees in the space where we cut down the invasive ones and put large rocks around each sapling so that the tortoises wouldn’t crush them. The invasive trees we helped to cut down and repurpose were guava trees. Guava seeds were brought to the islands either by birds or by humans, but take over the natural resources by growing more rapidly and much larger in space endemic species should be growing. The giant Galapagos tortoises actually love eating the guava fruit, but cannot digest the seeds so they remain in their feces and get replenished back into the soil, allowing the trees to grow and spread. We planted the scalesia trees in their place, a tree that is specifically endemic to the islands. Planting the new trees that would help the environment in the place of ones that were hurting it was truly one of the best and most rewarding feelings of the entire trip.
Though a large part of the trip was community service, I had plenty of time to adventure and explore the islands. A lot of the trip was also exploring the different towns on the islands and noticing the development as well as the level of environmental awareness found on the different islands. I hiked along a path with giant Galapagos tortoises every few yards, walked along the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen, waded in a river with mangrove trees surrounding us, swam in an inlet as pelicans dove into the water right next to us, kayaked as sea lions swam around our boats, watched playful sea lions on public beaches and snorkeled with green sea turtles in the most beautiful coves. All of this and more made the trip so incredible.
While exploring the islands, specifically the towns where a majority of people lived, I noticed a large amount of trash on the islands. I learned that some were waste from the islands themselves, but the trash found on coastal areas is mainly rubbish that floated from Sudamerica, Centroamerica, and Asia. The trash harms the unique ecosystems, marine, and land animals as well as humans. When the people of the islands took notice and in 2015, the Galapagos government agreed to ban single-use plastic. By August of 2018, single-use plastic was banned. The government successfully banned a specific category/type of single-use plastic each month until all of it was eventually outlawed. Even though single-use plastic is banned on the islands today, there are still some plastics in circulation at small restaurants and souvenir shops found around the islands. Eventually, this supply will diminish and single-use plastic will be exempt from the islands.
During my time on the islands I was never given a drink with a plastic straw and I was always asked if I wanted a plastic bag when shopping for food of souvenirs, rather than being given one. In most corner stores, paper straws, plates, and cutlery were sold instead of plastics. As single-use plastic was band, sodas and drinks like Gatorade and Coca-Cola are sold in glass bottles, but when purchasing you have to pay the extra 25-50 cents for the bottle. At many shops there was the option that if you bring back the bottle to the same store when you finished the drink and recycle it there, then they’d give you the money back, encouraging people to recycle.
The rubbish bins found on the islands say ‘recyclables’ and ‘non-recyclables’. Yet another way to remind people to only put their rubbish in the trash it cannot be recycled. Another thing I noticed was that houses had very small trash bins in order to encourage a lower amount of waste. It was very obvious that though there is a clear problem with trash on the islands, the people in the Galapagos are taking action and working to fix this.
Another form of waste that I learned about heavily during our time there was food waste. With limited fertile soil and natural resources to grow fruits and vegetables, the people of the islands are very strict about wasting food. In the hostels that I stayed in with my group, we would dump our excess food waste into another large bowl after finishing a meal. This excess food which would usually be wasted would instead be used for several different things. Animal food, compost and sometimes, depending on the type of food, it would be remade into a soup. The lack of fresh resources on the islands leads to difficulty in getting vegetables and fruits. Since we were a mildly large group for the hostels we stayed at, we were asked to bring different vegetables with us from the mainland. For example, on our journey to the islands, some of my friends had large bags of corn and carrots while I carried a 20 lb bag of potatoes. It was definitely very unusual for most people who walked by us in the airport but seemed like a normal occurrence once we got to the islands.
There are also many difficulties with the water supply which I noted through the very fast and very cold showers I had to take in efforts to conserve. Some of the islands have so much difficulty with obtaining fresh and clean water that they must have it brought from other islands in huge blue jugs. I constantly saw large trucks carrying these blue jugs driving through the streets of the towns.
Despite the many difficulties and problems faced by the environment of the Galapagos, conservation efforts by the people and the government are seemingly becoming more effective. The Charles Darwin Foundation and the World Wildlife Foundation both provide the most amount of aid to the islands through conservation actions.
There was so much that I learned on this life-changing trip about how the help the environment and how to apply those changes to my life at STEM. At the end of the trip at our nightly meeting, our group wrote out a list of ways to help do your part in conserving the environment. It is as follows:
Taking shorter showers
Create less food waste; correct portions, finishing all food at restaurants
Try going vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, dairy-free
Buying sustainably sourced clothes; second hand/thrifting
Reduce trash output; reusable sandwich bags, water bottle, travel cups, buy food in bulk
Bamboo toothbrushes, metal razors, shampoo/soap bars no plastic waste
Compost
Refusing single-use plastics
Walk/bike/carpool
Research/read articles to be able to speak knowledgeably about environmental topics
Volunteer more
Governmental action; lobby, write letters to representative
Join/start an environmental club (SAS!!)
Making sacrifices!
We as a group learned so much about human’s environmental impact and were compelled and inspired to apply large changes to our own lives. Every day I try to get as close to a zero-waste lunch as possible, I refuse single-use plastic as restaurants but also try to limit how often I eat out, I use reusable water bottles and sandwich bags, take shorter showers, primarily buy second-hand clothes, and most importantly, I joined my school’s environmental club where I hope to share what I learned on my trip with my peers in order to make a larger difference.
Julia Davidson