Leonardo DiCaprio has announced a US$43 million pledge to enact sweeping conservation operations across the Galapagos Islands, with his social media accounts taken over by a wildlife veterinarian and island restoration specialist.
The initiative, in partnership with Re:wild — an organization founded this year by a group of renowned conservation scientists and DiCaprio — the Galapagos National Park Directorate, Island Conservation and local communities aims to rewild the Galapagos Islands, as well as all of Latin America’s Pacific archipelagos.
The US$43 million pledge is to fund Galapagos projects, including efforts to restore Floreana Island, home to 54 threatened species, and reintroduce 13 locally extinct species, including the Floreana mockingbird — the first mockingbird described by Charles Darwin.
The money would also pay for a captive breeding program and other activities to prevent the extinction of the pink iguana, and strengthen measures to protect the Galapagos’ marine resources from the human impact of ecotourism.
“When I travelled to the Galapagos Islands, I met with Paula Castano and other environmental heroes in Ecuador working day in and day out to save one of the most irreplaceable places on the planet,” DiCaprio said. “Around the world, the wild is declining. We have degraded three-quarters of the wild places and pushed more than 1m [1 million] species to the brink of extinction. More than half of Earth’s remaining wild areas could disappear in the next few decades if we don’t decisively act.”
“The environmental heroes that the planet needs are already here. Now we all must rise to the challenge and join them,” he said.
“Time is running out for so many species, especially on islands where their small populations are vulnerable and threatened. We need catalytic investments like the one announced today to replicate our successes in the Galapagos and elsewhere,” said Castano, who is to take over DiCaprio’s Instagram and Twitter accounts to promote critical interventions needed to rewild the Galapagos.
Castano, who has been working as an island restoration specialist for eight years, believes that if humans can coexist with nature, ecosystems can be rewilded successfully.
“Up to 97 percent of the land area of the Galapagos Islands comes under national park status. We are not trying to remove humans from the picture. We are trying to all work together to rewild these ecosystems, and support the community as well. They want to be able to continue to thrive together with nature,” Castano said.
Castano cited successful rewilding restorations in the past.
In 2012, invasive rodents were removed from the island of Pinzon by the Galapagos national park, assisted by Island Conservation to benefit the Pinzon giant tortoise. As a result, new hatchlings were discovered in 2014.
“We have seen rewilding in our lifetime, so we don’t really have to wait five years or 20 or 50 years. These are immediate results,” she said. “We will see the payoff for all of these efforts, and not across only the Galapagos, but farther beyond archipelagos in Latin America.”
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