Tp Galapagos News Today

Journey home. over the years, the goats ate just about every plant of isabela and the tortoises began to starve. so desperate to save them, the ecuadorian government brought in carl, who knew exactly what had to be done. you used sharp shooters in helicopters. >> we did. >> snipers just instituting tens of thousands of goats a year. >> it was a lot of hard work. >> in the beginning, it was easy but if the galapagos taught us anything its that animals adapt. the goats eventually realized that the...

>> its the kind of bird that hides deep in these swampy mangrove jungle gyms on isabela. how can you tell its amman donndon -- abandoned from here? okay. >> oh, the mangrove finch. did you hear that? toot, toot, toot. >> thats a good sign all right. they say completely hidden during our hike. but heres footage from francescas team. not only are these birds threatened by rats but in the 1950s a random load of cargo brought a certain kind of fly to the galapagos, a fly that feeds on the little bea...

Catching one poor iguana repeatedly chucking it into the wave to see if it would come back to the same spot. it did. but modern science just discovered something more fascinating. >> they can shrink and go. so if theres not enough algae basically an adult sea iguana can shrink one third of the side. >> really? like anatomically get smaller? the worlds only sea-faring lizard is the only known species that can contract and expand its own bones. so they may actually hold a key to curing human bone ...

Incubators. >> really? youre incubating galapagos hair tortoises with a hair dryer. [ speaking spanish ] thats low-tech love. got to wonder how darwin would work humans with hair dryers into the whole survival of the fittest idea. look at that. adorable. but if so many things go just right, the life in these eggs will roam wild on these islands for a couple hundred years each. ♪ galapagos is so beautiful >> it was decades after their voyage before darwin published his radical ideas. and fitzro...

We ha >> we have put a depth gauge on a female sea hissen and that sea lion went down 700 meters. >> 2200 feet. >> 2100 feet. so this was a kind of surprise for us that they can go so deep. amazing. so with new technology were discovering new things. >> right. galapagos is at an intersection of four major ocean currents. a crossroads of nutrients flowing in from california to antarctica. but this kind of abundance comes thanks to location and law. you see, since the late 90s, big commercial fish...

>> it is time for a land iguana checkup. and this guy obviously does not know whats good for him. once a year, the park rangers of galapagos make sure these scaly locals are all eating and growing and mating and, most importantly, they make sure the invasive rats arent winning. so the little guy scoots in here, he smells this bait and when he touches that, snap. hes stuck. now, is this poison? her in here? >> no. >> the poison is laid out in pellet form which means theres always some collateral ...

This species evolves. how many tourists were there when you started in the 80s? >> maybe 30,000 tourists a year. >> and how many this year? >> now 200,000 tourists. >> ten times more. mathias has watched the biggest town in galapagos explode in his lifetime. stretching the limits of power, water and sanitation. when our daughters are our age, there will be an extra 3 or 4 billion people living on this planet. do you think its possible to preserve whats left of this garden of eden with that kind ...

You know its ironic. i saw so much wildlife roaming free but to catch the one creature that threatens most of them, i had to visit a glass case. this is the rogues gallery of rats. as careful custodians or the government of ecuador, the charles darwin foundation keeps a catalog of life both native and invasive. these are the different beaks? >> we have a woodpecker finch. >> this is a record of change from darwins favorite finches to the snake thats developed a taste fof seafood. >> these guys h...

Bit. >> arturo is back in the parks top spot once again and says that many of the fishermen, once at odds with eco-tourism, have since joined their ranks. you can fish in galapagos as long as its for your own consumption. so back on the "mabel" oswaldo is catching dinner, yellow-fin tuna, which will not go gently. its still fighting. over a third of the humans on this planet get their protein out of the ocean, but we are at a real tipping point. without conscientious consumpti consumption, witho...

Thought that we can still do it. with 3 billion people more, the task would be harder. well do our best. >> the man in charge of the park knows that, without tourists, there would be no park, but too many people could turn galapagos into another hawaii, where 95% of native species were wiped out by too much change too fast. so he is proposing a cap of less than a quarter million visitors a year. >> the way tourism is going up, we will probably reach by 2016 that limit. >> but he says galapagos c...