Charles Darwin by working to limit the number of tourists visiting the Galapagos Islands or Antarctica to protect their spectacular wildlife The Galapagos in the Pacific Ocean gave Darwin insights into evolution on his famed voyage around the world aboard The Beagle. Many species — from mockingbirds to tortoises – differ from those on the South American mainland.Among nightmare scenarios for Antarctica, first sighted in 1820, penguins might get bird flu. Or new seeds unwittingly brought by tourists might thrive and displace lichens and mosses found nowhere else on earth. A big cruise liner might run aground, spilling oil and coating beaches used by seals. But a group of environmentalists, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, wants the numbers capped — it hasn’t proposed an exact figure, but says it shouldn’t be too far above current levels.
And the unique wildlife is of the Galapagos is similarly under threat from people with both tourism and immigration from the South American mainland. See a BBC report here, for instance, saying that tourism rose to more than 173,000 last year. The United Nations in 2007 added the Galapagos to its list of world heritage sites in danger. AATO says the numbers are tiny — enough people to fill a football stadium across a continent bigger than the United States.
