Mr Eduardo Del Solar

Reflections from the 2008 Toyota International Teacher Program to the Galápagos Islands

del Solar teaches at the Instituto Alejandro Humboldt School in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal.

The Toyota International Teacher Program has provided me with a lifetime opportunity to visit the Galapagos Islands and learn about environmental sustainability. One thing I have been able to learn from this visit is that Galapagos Island is and will continue to be a Mecca for visitors, tourists and scientists alike, that want to see and experience first hand the endemic and migrant wildlife that is part of a five million year evolution that is happening in these volcanic islands. These are indeed magical islands! Unfortunately, these islands are in the process of being destroyed if the number of visitors to these islands continues to grow at its present rate.

Last year the Galapagos Islands was added to the World Heritage Danger List by the World Conservation Union. The Islands have seen an increase in the annual visitor numbers from 40,000 in 1996 to 120,000 in 2007. Ecuadorian immigrants from the mainland, continue to grow by 4% every year, a growth that is presently not sustainable. Presently, 75 % of Galapaguenos are afuereños and 25 % are natives. An afuereño is an Ecuadorian with a one year work permit that is renewable provided the person leaves to the mainland at the end of the year to reapply for a new permit. Add the problem of illegal immigrants, an Ecuadorian with no work permit, to a booming tourism industry and Galapagos now becomes a fragile ecosystem in danger.

Here are a few environmental issues:

  • Local enforcement officials are unable to control illegal fishing.
  • Continued growth of invasive species brought to these islands by visitors. The number of invasive species brought by visitors is now outnumbering the number of native species in the islands.
  • Limited water supply to meet the growth of the population.
  • Inadequate infrastructure facilities to accommodate island growth.

What is clear is that the growth of the numbers of visitors to is expected to continue its growth. While presently there is a cap to the numbers of visitors that can visit the islands, the cap is always expandable. It is presently dictated by market forces or purely political, not environmental, goals. David Sheppard, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature delegation said: “The main problems associated with the Galapagos Islands relate to the impact of tourism growth, which is driving immigration and overfishing. Adding the islands to the danger list is a positive way of raising the profile of these threats and highlighting the need for international action.”

How can I as a web design teacher integrate the teaching of environmental sustainability into my class? After all, my course outline states that students will learn how to hand code HTML pages and use Photoshop and Dreamweaver to create web pages. Here is an outline of my plan for this school year.

My web design classes require that all students engage in the production of individual and group projects for my class. The final exam is a presentation of an individual project that is assessed and evaluated by a group of peers. For this year, I decided that the group project for all my web design classes would be about Galapagos. During the second marking term, all students engaged in Internet-based research, and the research was driven by these five questions:

  1. How did the Galapagos Islands originated? Give me a physical and geological explanation.
  2. Who owns the Islands? Give me a historical and political history of the last 1,000 years.
  3. Why does this Island attract so many scientists interested in evolutionary theory? What did Darwin learn in these Islands regarding evolution? What are the goals of the Charles Darwin Research Center?
  4. Describe the impact tourism has on these islands?
  5. What conservations measures are presently in effect in the Islands? Name a few specific projects.

During the third term, students will use the research and images collected about Galapagos to hand code a simple five page website that uses images and text to tell their stories about Galapagos. Additionally, every year each student has to present a final project during the fifth term to the entire class. Since my classes are project-based, I like to use the fourth marking term to present my own final exam project to my students and have my entire class grade and critique my project. This activity gives my students the opportunity to use the vocabulary and criteria we use to critique final exam projects. web sites. What will my project, or “final exam” be for this year? The Galapagos Islands, of course, what else! Thus I will be able to share with my students, via images and text, my reflections regarding this experience.

I expect to set my website at http://www.delsolar.org/galapagos. Presently, I am feverishly working on the 5, 000 plus images I have about this trip. As of today, I feel I will never finish this part of the project. I have cut down the number of images to 2,000 but that number is way too large! The website will be about education in Galapagos, the endemic and migrant wildlife, the fragility of the islands and the impact of tourism on the environment, to name a few. I am still trying to process this incredible experience. Seeing some of the images from this trip, sets me in wonder about the magical experience we all have been through.

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