The highlands: I know this place

We've just had a wonderful stay at a friends' gorgeous little house on their cacao farm in the highlands of Santa Cruz Island. It's so peaceful; the dominant sounds being finches tweeting and tree canopies swaying in the breeze. It has a lovely view down to the coast, including town at a respectable distance. We did a day trip to Garrapatero Beach, which was awesome, especially for watching flamingos - see video 🤩. Grateful 🙏🏼.

I've spent some relax time reading over my PhD papers, remembering that I used to know this area so well from traipsing around doing field work: Recording plant densities and interviewing older residents right across the Santa Cruz highlands. My publications showed that historical vegetation was more varied than commonly understood; that in 2011 invasive plants made up 41% of the canopy in the National Park; and that contemporary vegetation is highly modified from natural, and would need a lot of effort/investment to achieve management goals.

Unsurprisingly, the overall situation hasn't changed much: Some plant invasions have worsened, others have died down due to a pathogen. Other big ecological impacts include: introduced frogs and ants are now well established, and this is affecting native insects. Thankfully, some areas are still lovely and contain lots of native trees. And the giant tortoises don't mind anyway - they eat everything!

Earlier we were fortunate to be taken on two other trips to the Highlands:

Rosemary drove us to Galapagos Frontier in the Guayabillos area to see giant tortoises, hike through pretty natural mixed forest, and explore a lava tunnel cave - a fab outing 😄.

Miriam took us along to collect sample teabags buried near Cerro Mesa - this was so fun, reliving fieldwork memories of scrambling through scrubby forest with a machete 😂. It was like a treasure hunt finding the teabags under the Tradescantia plants and among rocks, roots and soil (they're used for comparing decomposition rates).

Still hoping to visit some other choice spots in the highlands in the next 10 days🤞🏼.Meer informatie