The crusade for Crusoe’s islands
Travel to remote islands by air is thrilling but seems somehow inappropriate. Surely arriving by sea is the way to experience authentic ‘islandness’, particularly if the outcrop you’re visiting is one famous for castaways and pirates.
Arriving in the Juan Fernández Islands, located 600 kilometres off the coast of Chile, you get both experiences in spades. The archipelago was named after the 16th-century Spanish explorer who stumbled across the islands while trying to find a new trade route between Peru and Valparaiso in 1574, but it’s more famous for an irascible Scotsman called Alexander Selkirk, who, in 1704, marooned himself here, and went on to become the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s famous novel Robinson Crusoe.
Seen from the air, Robinson Crusoe Island announces itself in the form of extinct volcanoes that soar 1,620 metres out of the Pacific Ocean. On landing, it becomes clear why the only way in or out is on an eight-seater plane from Santiago: the landing strip is the only flat part of the island, and it feels about as long as the average cul-de-sac. (Travel by sea to the islands isn’t recommended by Chilean tourism officials, although some cruise ships allow passengers ashore on Robinson Crusoe Island.) To get to the pretty village of San Juan Bautista at the other end of the island, there’s either a 20-kilometre walk that finishes with a very steep 500-metre climb up and down or a one-and-a-half-hour boat trip.
The boat journey begins at the main colony of the Juan Fernández fur seal. Known locally as the sea wolf, it’s just one of numerous species endemic to the archipelago. Not at all bothered by people, it was on the brink of extinction when it gained legal protection during the 1970s. Slaughtered for its meat and fur, which once kept Napoleon’s troops warm, its population crashed to just 200 individuals, but has since thrived, and now numbers in the tens of thousands.
Endemics at risk
The Juan Fernández archipelago is full of castaways – plants and animals that somehow ended up on these remote outcrops and evolved over millions of years into species that occur nowhere else on Earth. ‘This is one of the global jewels of biodiversity,’ says Peter Hodum, an ecologist from the University of Puget Sound in Washington state, who heads up the conservation organisation Oikonos and has worked on the islands for 15 years. ‘Although it doesn’t have the cachet of the Galápagos, it’s just as important.’
The islands have more than 130 endemic plant species – nearly two thirds of its flora – including the white-flowering Luma trees and the Juan Bueno, a purple-tube-flowered shrub that has co-evolved with the astonishingly beautiful but critically endangered Juan Fernández firecrown hummingbird, another endemic. And then there are the ferns – from huge tree ferns to tiny delicate fronds on dripping cliffs – not to mention the red-backed hawk and the Juan Fernández subspecies of the American kestrel, and 400 beetle species.
Because of this unique biodiversity and spectacular scenery, the islands were designated a Chilean national park during the 1930s, and a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1977. However, a visitor with an ecological eye will soon pick up trouble in paradise.
The problems started in 1540, when the archipelago’s discoverer, Juan Fernández, dropped off four goats to provide food for future mariners. They turned out to be a godsend for castaways such as Selkirk, but a nightmare for the island’s flora – their numbers have since swelled to around 3,500 and their voracious appetites have wreaked havoc on the native vegetation.
Unlike Selkirk, who was eager to be rescued, many of those who came later decided to stay: pirates, political prisoners and, during the 19th century, colonists. The island’s population has always been small – there are currently around 750 islanders, 600 of whom live in San Juan Bautista sustained by lobster fishing, cattle farming and government subsidies. Like Juan Fernández, those who followed brought the seeds of the islands’ destruction with them, often literally.
Overgrazing by livestock, as well as rabbits and those goats, has led to irreversible erosion. Rats and mice jumped ship to become predators of endemic birds and gnawers of rare plants. Domestic cats and the introduced coati also preyed on ground-nesting birds. Ornamental plants skipped over garden fences to colonise disturbed land. A European blackberry hedge went mad and started smothering hectares of pristine forest. A dense-thicket-forming South American shrub called the maqui has had the same effect. The spread of introduced plants is aided and abetted by one of the locals, the Magellan thrush, which disperses non-native seeds far and wide.
The effect on the indigenous wildlife has been catastrophic. The Juan Fernández firecrown population is thought to have plunged to 400 individuals, in large part because only ten per cent of the forest in which it feeds on insects and flower nectar has survived overgrazing, erosion and replacement by introduced plants. Thanks to conservation programmes and the planting of native shrubs in village gardens, numbers have risen to as many as 2,000–3,000 individuals, but coming into the village to find food makes them vulnerable to attack by cats.
A small songbird called the Masafuera rayadito that lives on Alejandro Selkirk Island is down to just 140 individuals, the goats having devastated its habitat and the rats having eaten its eggs. And five seabirds – four petrels and a shearwater – are listed as ‘vulnerable’.
Of the 123 endemic plant species that have been classified in a risk category, five are now considered to be extinct, 72 are ‘endangered and rare’, 21 endangered and 21 vulnerable. There are 14 plant species with fewer than ten individuals left in the wild; some of these are down to a lone individual. Saddest of all, perhaps, is the tale of the cloud-forest flowering shrub Robinsonia berteroi – the last of its kind was gnawed by a rat a few years ago.
Limited tourism
According to island-biology expert Tod Stuessy from the University of Vienna’s Institute of Botany, the Juan Fernández Islands are ‘a biogeographic puzzle, a unique place to test evolutionary hypotheses and a symbol for conservation. We all have a responsibility for their stewardship.’ The international conservation community is working with the Chilean authorities on a conservation strategy for the archipelago, and many are looking to tourism as a way in which to exercise responsible stewardship.
The Chilean government has worked to keep tourism in the archipelago low key. ‘Chile values the unique flora and fauna of the Juan Fernández Islands as heritage for the world,’ says Miguel Schottlander, the head of the natural resources protection department. ‘Even special-interest tourism, restricted to small groups, could damage the ecology if it’s left uncontrolled. However, tourism is very important for the local people; they would like to see more. At present, there is a stable population [on Robinson Crusoe Island], and we are afraid that the island can’t sustain a larger population.’
Aaron Cavieres of Chile’s National Commission for the Environment, who is the executive secretary of the Biodiversity Conservancy Programme for the Juan Fernández Islands, believes that tourism has played an important role in creating a strong local interest in biodiversity. ‘This is because islanders have come to realise what a treasure their archipelago is,’ he says. ‘And because they do not depend so much on the land [for agriculture] as they did in the past, tourism is an important source of income. Tourism is becoming more important. The sustainability problem, in my view, comes from bad practices of the past – overgrazing, felling trees and invasive species. I would say tourism could play a role in the sustainability of the islanders by reducing dependence on government subsidies.’
Hodum agrees. ‘If more people came, not just for diving and eating lobster, but to see the forest and the Juan Fernández firecrown, it would be a positive reinforcement for the islanders and the conservation strategy,’ he says.
‘If it’s done sensitively and on an appropriate scale, tourism could be helpful,’ he continues. ‘There is too little awareness of what these islands offer to biodiversity. It would raise awareness and benefit the local economy if tourism was thoughtfully focused explicitly on the endemic species and their uniqueness. This must not be sugar-coated; people should understand the threats and see the destruction of cloud forests invaded by non-native plants. This would build a commitment for conservation.’
Conservation plans
Until recently, tourists numbered a steady 1,500–2,000 a year, coming to dive, snorkel, hike, watch wildlife and eat lobster. Infrastructure is currently pretty basic, with a hotel, a few hostels and campsites, and a couple of bars and restaurants catering to the intrepid few.
Travel to and from the islands is at the mercy of the weather: if you can’t get the little plane from Santiago to come out, you stay put. A Japanese couple currently holds the record for the longest enforced stay: two weeks.
Any further development has had to be put on hold after a tsunami struck the islands immediately following the Chilean earthquake in February. Sixteen people were killed and much of San Juan Bautista was destroyed. Now, the immediate priorities focus on aid for the islanders and rebuilding infrastructure, local enterprise and livelihoods. But people are already looking to the future, talking about what kind of town they want.
Local people and conservationists have suggested building an aviary, a botanical garden and a conservation centre. ‘There is an opportunity for the conservation community to help the Juan Fernández community,’ says Cavieres, ‘supporting its interests in redesign and reconstruction to include tourism possibilities for the people, as wells as biodiversity conservation.’
The Juan Fernández firecrown, the only species of hummingbird to have evolved on an oceanic island and consequently one of the world’s rarest birds, has become a symbol of conservation on the archipelago. The male looks like the ginger bobble off a tam-o’-shanter and the females are iridescent green and silver. Regularly seen flitting through the endemic Luma trees in the forest, or hovering to sip nectar from garden flowers in the village, they are far from shy, and create a powerful presence completely disproportionate to their tiny size.
Last November, organisations within the international conservation community, the islanders and the Chilean authorities agreed a long-term conservation plan at a conference in Viña del Mar, Chile. Shoot the goats, poison the rats, grub out the bramble: that was the consensus. Alan Saunders, who manages New Zealand’s invasive species management programme, is optimistic. ‘They say you can’t turn the clock back, but I say that we can get awfully close in restoring islands to their previous state. We’ve eradicated introduced species from New Zealand islands such as Tiritiri Matangi, and we can have a good go [in the Juan Fernández].’
The control of introduced plants and animals, including livestock, has widespread support, although there is some disquiet among the locals about the removal of the goats, due to their cultural and historical significance. The restoration of the forests and removal of introduced plant species is a much more daunting task, but efforts will also be put into ex-situ conservation of vulnerable plant species and the institution of biosecurity measures, which currently hardly exist, to prevent the arrival of new species that might cause more trouble. Many in the local community back such measures. ‘We must act now,’ one islander tells me. ‘Our islands are dying.’
To the rescue
On Robinson Crusoe Island, 500 metres above the harbour at San Juan Bautista, is a knife-edge ridge; a windy look-out where Alexander Selkirk would come to scan the horizon for ships.
Conservationists dream of rescue too. As Ivan Julio Leiva Silva, director of the Juan Fernández National Park, says: ‘The important thing about this biodiversity is that it has a meaning for itself, but it’s up to us to take care of it.’
Chile co-ordinates
When to go
The Juan Fernández Islands have a Mediterranean-style climate, with the best weather and high tourist season between October and April.
Getting there
There are flights to Robinson Crusoe Island from Chile’s capital, Santiago, with TAIRC (www.tairc.cl) on eight-seater planes. These take about three hours (but are often delayed or cancelled due to bad weather) and allow ten kilograms of luggage per person. After arrival, there is a 90-minute transfer by boat to the village of San Juan Bautista.
Further information
There are no banks on the islands, so visitors must bring cash. There is also a fee of 3,000 pesos (about £3.70) for entry to the national park. For more about conservation on the islands, visit http://biodiversa.cl (in Spanish) or www.oikonos.org.
Arriving in the Juan Fernández Islands, located 600 kilometres off the coast of Chile, you get both experiences in spades. The archipelago was named after the 16th-century Spanish explorer who stumbled across the islands while trying to find a new trade route between Peru and Valparaiso in 1574, but it’s more famous for an irascible Scotsman called Alexander Selkirk, who, in 1704, marooned himself here, and went on to become the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s famous novel Robinson Crusoe.
Seen from the air, Robinson Crusoe Island announces itself in the form of extinct volcanoes that soar 1,620 metres out of the Pacific Ocean. On landing, it becomes clear why the only way in or out is on an eight-seater plane from Santiago: the landing strip is the only flat part of the island, and it feels about as long as the average cul-de-sac. (Travel by sea to the islands isn’t recommended by Chilean tourism officials, although some cruise ships allow passengers ashore on Robinson Crusoe Island.) To get to the pretty village of San Juan Bautista at the other end of the island, there’s either a 20-kilometre walk that finishes with a very steep 500-metre climb up and down or a one-and-a-half-hour boat trip.
The boat journey begins at the main colony of the Juan Fernández fur seal. Known locally as the sea wolf, it’s just one of numerous species endemic to the archipelago. Not at all bothered by people, it was on the brink of extinction when it gained legal protection during the 1970s. Slaughtered for its meat and fur, which once kept Napoleon’s troops warm, its population crashed to just 200 individuals, but has since thrived, and now numbers in the tens of thousands.
Endemics at risk
The Juan Fernández archipelago is full of castaways – plants and animals that somehow ended up on these remote outcrops and evolved over millions of years into species that occur nowhere else on Earth. ‘This is one of the global jewels of biodiversity,’ says Peter Hodum, an ecologist from the University of Puget Sound in Washington state, who heads up the conservation organisation Oikonos and has worked on the islands for 15 years. ‘Although it doesn’t have the cachet of the Galápagos, it’s just as important.’
The islands have more than 130 endemic plant species – nearly two thirds of its flora – including the white-flowering Luma trees and the Juan Bueno, a purple-tube-flowered shrub that has co-evolved with the astonishingly beautiful but critically endangered Juan Fernández firecrown hummingbird, another endemic. And then there are the ferns – from huge tree ferns to tiny delicate fronds on dripping cliffs – not to mention the red-backed hawk and the Juan Fernández subspecies of the American kestrel, and 400 beetle species.
Because of this unique biodiversity and spectacular scenery, the islands were designated a Chilean national park during the 1930s, and a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1977. However, a visitor with an ecological eye will soon pick up trouble in paradise.
The problems started in 1540, when the archipelago’s discoverer, Juan Fernández, dropped off four goats to provide food for future mariners. They turned out to be a godsend for castaways such as Selkirk, but a nightmare for the island’s flora – their numbers have since swelled to around 3,500 and their voracious appetites have wreaked havoc on the native vegetation.
Unlike Selkirk, who was eager to be rescued, many of those who came later decided to stay: pirates, political prisoners and, during the 19th century, colonists. The island’s population has always been small – there are currently around 750 islanders, 600 of whom live in San Juan Bautista sustained by lobster fishing, cattle farming and government subsidies. Like Juan Fernández, those who followed brought the seeds of the islands’ destruction with them, often literally.
Overgrazing by livestock, as well as rabbits and those goats, has led to irreversible erosion. Rats and mice jumped ship to become predators of endemic birds and gnawers of rare plants. Domestic cats and the introduced coati also preyed on ground-nesting birds. Ornamental plants skipped over garden fences to colonise disturbed land. A European blackberry hedge went mad and started smothering hectares of pristine forest. A dense-thicket-forming South American shrub called the maqui has had the same effect. The spread of introduced plants is aided and abetted by one of the locals, the Magellan thrush, which disperses non-native seeds far and wide.
The effect on the indigenous wildlife has been catastrophic. The Juan Fernández firecrown population is thought to have plunged to 400 individuals, in large part because only ten per cent of the forest in which it feeds on insects and flower nectar has survived overgrazing, erosion and replacement by introduced plants. Thanks to conservation programmes and the planting of native shrubs in village gardens, numbers have risen to as many as 2,000–3,000 individuals, but coming into the village to find food makes them vulnerable to attack by cats.
A small songbird called the Masafuera rayadito that lives on Alejandro Selkirk Island is down to just 140 individuals, the goats having devastated its habitat and the rats having eaten its eggs. And five seabirds – four petrels and a shearwater – are listed as ‘vulnerable’.
Of the 123 endemic plant species that have been classified in a risk category, five are now considered to be extinct, 72 are ‘endangered and rare’, 21 endangered and 21 vulnerable. There are 14 plant species with fewer than ten individuals left in the wild; some of these are down to a lone individual. Saddest of all, perhaps, is the tale of the cloud-forest flowering shrub Robinsonia berteroi – the last of its kind was gnawed by a rat a few years ago.
Limited tourism
According to island-biology expert Tod Stuessy from the University of Vienna’s Institute of Botany, the Juan Fernández Islands are ‘a biogeographic puzzle, a unique place to test evolutionary hypotheses and a symbol for conservation. We all have a responsibility for their stewardship.’ The international conservation community is working with the Chilean authorities on a conservation strategy for the archipelago, and many are looking to tourism as a way in which to exercise responsible stewardship.
The Chilean government has worked to keep tourism in the archipelago low key. ‘Chile values the unique flora and fauna of the Juan Fernández Islands as heritage for the world,’ says Miguel Schottlander, the head of the natural resources protection department. ‘Even special-interest tourism, restricted to small groups, could damage the ecology if it’s left uncontrolled. However, tourism is very important for the local people; they would like to see more. At present, there is a stable population [on Robinson Crusoe Island], and we are afraid that the island can’t sustain a larger population.’
Aaron Cavieres of Chile’s National Commission for the Environment, who is the executive secretary of the Biodiversity Conservancy Programme for the Juan Fernández Islands, believes that tourism has played an important role in creating a strong local interest in biodiversity. ‘This is because islanders have come to realise what a treasure their archipelago is,’ he says. ‘And because they do not depend so much on the land [for agriculture] as they did in the past, tourism is an important source of income. Tourism is becoming more important. The sustainability problem, in my view, comes from bad practices of the past – overgrazing, felling trees and invasive species. I would say tourism could play a role in the sustainability of the islanders by reducing dependence on government subsidies.’
Hodum agrees. ‘If more people came, not just for diving and eating lobster, but to see the forest and the Juan Fernández firecrown, it would be a positive reinforcement for the islanders and the conservation strategy,’ he says.
‘If it’s done sensitively and on an appropriate scale, tourism could be helpful,’ he continues. ‘There is too little awareness of what these islands offer to biodiversity. It would raise awareness and benefit the local economy if tourism was thoughtfully focused explicitly on the endemic species and their uniqueness. This must not be sugar-coated; people should understand the threats and see the destruction of cloud forests invaded by non-native plants. This would build a commitment for conservation.’
Conservation plans
Until recently, tourists numbered a steady 1,500–2,000 a year, coming to dive, snorkel, hike, watch wildlife and eat lobster. Infrastructure is currently pretty basic, with a hotel, a few hostels and campsites, and a couple of bars and restaurants catering to the intrepid few.
Travel to and from the islands is at the mercy of the weather: if you can’t get the little plane from Santiago to come out, you stay put. A Japanese couple currently holds the record for the longest enforced stay: two weeks.
Any further development has had to be put on hold after a tsunami struck the islands immediately following the Chilean earthquake in February. Sixteen people were killed and much of San Juan Bautista was destroyed. Now, the immediate priorities focus on aid for the islanders and rebuilding infrastructure, local enterprise and livelihoods. But people are already looking to the future, talking about what kind of town they want.
Local people and conservationists have suggested building an aviary, a botanical garden and a conservation centre. ‘There is an opportunity for the conservation community to help the Juan Fernández community,’ says Cavieres, ‘supporting its interests in redesign and reconstruction to include tourism possibilities for the people, as wells as biodiversity conservation.’
The Juan Fernández firecrown, the only species of hummingbird to have evolved on an oceanic island and consequently one of the world’s rarest birds, has become a symbol of conservation on the archipelago. The male looks like the ginger bobble off a tam-o’-shanter and the females are iridescent green and silver. Regularly seen flitting through the endemic Luma trees in the forest, or hovering to sip nectar from garden flowers in the village, they are far from shy, and create a powerful presence completely disproportionate to their tiny size.
Last November, organisations within the international conservation community, the islanders and the Chilean authorities agreed a long-term conservation plan at a conference in Viña del Mar, Chile. Shoot the goats, poison the rats, grub out the bramble: that was the consensus. Alan Saunders, who manages New Zealand’s invasive species management programme, is optimistic. ‘They say you can’t turn the clock back, but I say that we can get awfully close in restoring islands to their previous state. We’ve eradicated introduced species from New Zealand islands such as Tiritiri Matangi, and we can have a good go [in the Juan Fernández].’
The control of introduced plants and animals, including livestock, has widespread support, although there is some disquiet among the locals about the removal of the goats, due to their cultural and historical significance. The restoration of the forests and removal of introduced plant species is a much more daunting task, but efforts will also be put into ex-situ conservation of vulnerable plant species and the institution of biosecurity measures, which currently hardly exist, to prevent the arrival of new species that might cause more trouble. Many in the local community back such measures. ‘We must act now,’ one islander tells me. ‘Our islands are dying.’
To the rescue
On Robinson Crusoe Island, 500 metres above the harbour at San Juan Bautista, is a knife-edge ridge; a windy look-out where Alexander Selkirk would come to scan the horizon for ships.
Conservationists dream of rescue too. As Ivan Julio Leiva Silva, director of the Juan Fernández National Park, says: ‘The important thing about this biodiversity is that it has a meaning for itself, but it’s up to us to take care of it.’
Chile co-ordinates
When to go
The Juan Fernández Islands have a Mediterranean-style climate, with the best weather and high tourist season between October and April.
Getting there
There are flights to Robinson Crusoe Island from Chile’s capital, Santiago, with TAIRC (www.tairc.cl) on eight-seater planes. These take about three hours (but are often delayed or cancelled due to bad weather) and allow ten kilograms of luggage per person. After arrival, there is a 90-minute transfer by boat to the village of San Juan Bautista.
Further information
There are no banks on the islands, so visitors must bring cash. There is also a fee of 3,000 pesos (about £3.70) for entry to the national park. For more about conservation on the islands, visit http://biodiversa.cl (in Spanish) or www.oikonos.org.
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