ABSTRACT
The Galápagos requires, but currently lacks, an integrated system for tracking the biological, social, economic and cultural characteristics of the islands. A continual flow of monitoring information is critical to the adaptive management of the archipelago because monitoring provides the information feedback loop required to distinguish human impacts from natural changes and thereby guide conservation management and policy (Gibbs et al. 1999). Two stellar examples from Galápagos illustrate the critical role that monitoring data play in the adaptive management loop: co-management of the Marine Reserve (Heylings and Bravo 2007) and large-scale removal of introduced hoofed mammals (Campbell and Donlan 2005). Although monitoring of some critical ecosystem components occurs in the physical realm (e.g. volcanism – Thomas et al. 2009; sea temperatures and productivity – Garcés-Vargas et al. 2005; Banks 2003), the biological realm (e.g. infectious disease – Bataille et al. 2009; bird populations – Vargas et al. 2006; Gibbs et al. 2003; plant communities – Hamann 1993; invasive insects – Causton et al. 2005; subtidal rocky reef communities – Edgar et al. 2009) and the human social realm (e.g. human migration – Bremner and Perez 2002), it is remarkable that an integrated system for tracking the status of the entire Galápagos ecosystem is lacking. Galápagos’ highly endemic biological diversity is at stake but, as importantly, so is the welfare of over 30,000 human residents because their fates are intimately tied together. This is because virtually all of Galápagos’ human economy is linked to its lucrative ecotourism industry (Kenchington 1989). The connection between human welfare and biological health is stark in Galápagos; perhaps nowhere else on Earth do so many people rely on their government to make good decisions about conserving biodiversity, both for the biota's sake and for their own.
