Safe, for now (Image: Mark Harding/SplashdownDirect/Rex Features)

What should we make of the World Heritage Committee‘s decision to cross the Galapagos Islands off its danger list? At face value it suggests that the islands’ remarkable and unique animals, which include the famous Darwin’s finches, giant tortoises and flightless cormorants, are now safe. But conservationists around the world are warning that the decision could backfire disastrously.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) maintains a list of 890 sites that are considered to be vital to the world’s cultural and natural heritage. Of these, 32 are on the “List of World Heritage in Danger” at the time of writing.

The Galapagos, which are part of Ecuador, were added to the list in 2007 at the request of the Ecuadorian government. But the government announced on its website on Wednesday that it had successfully lobbied the WHC to get the islands off the danger list.


During the WHC meeting the government reported measures it has put in place to protect the islands, including controls on migration, a residence card, controls on invasive species and improved governance. Ecuador’s minister of cultural heritage, María Fernanda Espinosa, said, “Ecuador showed all the efforts that it has made from 2007 to demonstrate that it is working on the conservation of the islands.”

The danger list does not have any legal force, but is used to draw attention to important sites that are under threat, and to encourage governments to save them.

Conservationists overruled

The International Union for Conservation of Nature had strongly recommended that the islands stay on the list. But the WHC, which is composed of political delegates from member nations, overruled the IUCN’s recommendation by 14 to 5, with one abstention.

“We make our recommendations on a technical basis, and we think our advice was soundly based. We feel a better decision would have been to stick with the original plan,” says Tim Badman, head of the IUCN’s world heritage programme.

The IUCN concedes that Ecuador has made “significant progress” in addressing the problems facing the Galapagos, which include invasive species, unbridled tourism and overfishing. But, it says, those problems are far from solved.

Trouble in paradise

Marc Patry, a member of the secretariat to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, which advises the World Heritage Committee, visited the Galapagos in April. “We recommended that it remain on the danger list, because some critical items needed to be completed,” he says.

Invasive species such as rats are a particular problem. Rats are brought over by boat and are a major threat to the island’s indigenous species, many of which have not evolved to cope with predators.

Some measures are in place to stop these unwanted visitors. For instance, boats wishing to visit the Galapagos must first stop off at mainland Ecuador for a period of quarantine, and airplane interiors are fumigated on the way over.

“It is very important to establish strict measures to filter out arriving species. Ecuador has done a lot, but there are things still to be done,” says Patry.

“The WHC decision could give the impression that the Galapagos are no longer in danger,” says Toni Darton, chief executive of the Galapagos Conservation Trust, a charity based in London. “I hope that it doesn’t damage the funding from the Ecuadorian government and from overseas donors.”

More people coming

The decision to delist the Galapagos comes just two months before the airline LAN Ecuador is due to start serving the islands. It will become only the third airline allowed to fly there: because of the islands’ fame, demand for flights has always outstripped supply, so the route is likely to be highly profitable.

Darton notes that the islands have 550 native and endemic plants, outnumbered by more than 800 introduced plant species.

What’s more, the islands’ unique finches are under threat from a fly called Philornis downsi, which was accidentally introduced in the mid-1990s and whose larvae parasitise the birds with fatal results. Several finch species are now critically endangered, and Darton claims they could be wiped out on some of the islands within 10 years. Flights to the islands are also bringing in disease-carrying mosquitoes.

“Tourism could destroy the Galapagos if it’s not managed – or it could save them if you think it through and plan it,” says Darton.