CREDITS

To make the most of the available budget, I myself carried out most of the interviews, directed the production, and wrote the script and edited the dialogue. I also took on all graphic design for video and print.

Filming, editing and production was carried out by the excellent people at Arutam Films in Quito, Ecuador.

It is narrated in Spanish by Francisco Ordóñez, President of the Quito regional Union of Journalists.

It is narrated in English by Nicola Burnett Smith, actress.

Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz island, 1930s.

This decade saw the archipelago in its wors state of natural degradation after centuries of human depradation on land and sea, exterminating some species and bringing others close to extinction, while at the same time introducing invasive plant and animal species that continue to threaten entire ecosystems to this day.

It was also the decade when the first conservation efforts took place, focusing on saving and restoring the population of specific species, like the emblematic giant tortoises.

Ecuadorian settlers
Santa Cruz, 1935.

Settlers lived, as they do today, on the coast towns from fishing and on the higher parts of the islands where there is enough fertile soil for small plantations.

Foto: R. Blomberg

Puerto Ayora, 1963.

Up unil the 1980s, total population throughout the inhabited islands was very small.

Puerto Ayora, 2007.

In the last two decades, population growth has been unprecedented.

Successive inmigration waves caused by natural disasters on the mainland and the promise of a more prosperous (and safer) life in the tourism industry have swelled the population to some 30.000 estimated inhabitants in 2007/08.

The limits of the urban area with national park land can be clearly seen.

Urban growth continues today.

In 2009, the inhabitable area of Puerto Ayora was almost doubled in size thanks to a land exchange of more degraded areas adjacent to the town for a somewhat larger privately-owned area from the highlands with a higher biodiversity value.

This land exchange is contemplated in Ecuadorian law. It was promoted by the Puerto Ayora mayor and signed by the Environment Minister and the Director of the Galapagos National Park Service.

Cox family, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal island in the 1960s (in the photo, Witman Cox is the boy standing in the middle).

Life in Galapagos was hard but simple, and completely bound to its natural surroundings.

Food was locally fished, hunted or grown, and the few items brought in from the mainland were expensive.

Witman Cox with his own family, 2008.

Urban Galapagos resembles more and more a typical Ecuadorian town, both in its appearance and in its inhabitants' habits and aspirations.

As Galapagos communities develop, the growing human activity creates new conservation challenges with an ever-increasing risk of introduction of all kinds of invasive life forms.