The government of Ecuador discreetly named last Friday. Ecuador is who governs the islands located in the Pacific Ocean nearly a thousand kilometers from the mainland.
Berdonces, 30, reached the Galapagos as a child and replaces Walter Bustos in the direction of the Galapagos National Park and Marine Reserve. Bustos, an official of the Ministry of Environment, has served as interim director for four months.
"This is my passion," Berdonces said in an interview. "I studied for this, I have been a national park guide, I have a degree dive, my family is dedicated to tourism, I know the business of the Galapagos from within."
Berdonces has a master's degree in environmental studies from the University James coook in Australia. It is the third woman to hold the post of director of the Galapagos National Park.
His position is one of the most significance for global environmentalism. The director of the park, which includes almost the entire area of the chain of volcanic islands and thousands of square kilometers of ocean, is responsible for protecting and caring for the park flora and fauna. In the park their home so revered species as threatened and the Galapagos giant tortoise, albatross islands or blue-footed cormorants.
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A cormorant blue paw on Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos Archipelago. Credit Thomas Rodriguez, University of Miami
The post is important. "I could lose a lot and could save a lot," Roy Tui, photographer and advocate of nature who grew up in the Galapagos said and published photos of the islands for decades. "The direction taken depends on human behavior."
While Berdonces assumes command, Ecuador's government takes steps to better protect the archipelago. and all fishing is prohibited in the northern third of the island chain and have created a sanctuary for sharks.
A new port will be the exclusive channel through which the goods arrive in the islands, as it is considered important not to reach the plants and animals that may unbalance the islands ecosystem. The government has also imposed a limit of 36 rooms at the hotels built to avoid overcrowding and is merging the management of land and sea areas that until now functioned separately.
"We must work together," said Berdonces. "Before, when a sea lion was on the rocks, it was under supervision of the park. When he entered the water was the responsibility of the maritime reserve ".
One of the problems facing Berdonces is the tension between the growing number of tourists visiting the Galapagos and concern for the damage they cause in the environment. The islands were designated natural heritage of humanity by UNESCO in 1979 and United Nations declared in 2007 that the archipelago was at risk, partly due to rampant tourism.
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A giant Galapagos tortoise. Credit Thomas Rodriguez, University of Miami
The annual number of visitors has been growing steadily: 145,000 in 2006, the year before the agency intervened. In 1990 alone they had reached 40,000, according to an organization of protection of nature called Galapagos Conservancy based in Fairfax, Virginia. Unesco took the islands from the list of endangered places in 2012 saying that if progress was well seen, tourism continued to grow. The Ecuadorian government registered 224,755 tourists in 2015.
The Galapagos have always had few inhabitants. But employment in the tourism industry acts as a magnet. About 30,000 people, most of Ecuador, have come in search of opportunities. They work in hotels and restaurants or on cruise ships, give surf lessons, rent bikes, organize guided tours or selling souvenirs.
Two thirds of the inhabitants live in the largest city of the archipelago, Puerto Ayora on the island of St. Cruz. The main street, cobbled, is the Charles Darwin Avenue and winds its way through the bay of the Academy, full of businesses of all kinds.
Berdonces's father, Vicente, 58, has led a dive company on the island Santa Cruz for more than 20 years and this linkage to tourism does not like all environmental advocates. But it has support in the community.
Susana Schiess, a Swiss immigrant who runs one of the most successful restaurants on the island, thumbs up in approval to the appointment of Berdonces.
"Meet the islands," Schiess said. "Know your problems. He is very young and that could be a problem, but I think it will do everything in their power ".
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