Tag Archives: Galapagos Islands

Oil exploitation is threatening the Ecuadorian rainforest – and the planet

‘No to Block 28!’ Indigenous and peasant communities are fighting to protect nature and their way of life in a remote corner of the Amazon

By Andrés Tapia.  Published 4-21-2021 by openDemocracy

Clear water coming down from the ‘blue mountains’ in Pastaza, Ecuador | Andrés Tapis

 

I grew up in the Ecuadorian countryside. My first memories are from around 1990, when my family and I were living on a 28-hectare farm, a pioneering conservation project in the tropical rainforest.

Often, I would sit with my sister on the front steps of our house, gazing at the “blue mountains”. It was my father who coined that phrase, after their distinctive colouration. Decades later, while studying field biology at university, I learned that these were the subtropical Andes. Specifically, the Abitahua Protected Forest of the Llanganates Sangay Ecological Corridor, a transition area (also known as an ecotone) that connects the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes with the Amazonian lowlands. Continue reading

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Proposal to ‘Pave Paradise’ in Galapagos Islands for US Military Airstrip Met With Criticism in Ecuador and Beyond

“Galapagos is NOT an ‘aircraft carrier’ for gringo use.”

By Eoin Higgins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-17-2019

A Galapagos fur seal. he seal will share its environment with the Pentagon per a new plan from the Ecuadorian government that would extend a landing strip at the region’s airport to accommodate U.S. military aircraft. Photo: D. Gordon E. Robertson [CC]

The Galapagos Islands archipelago in Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse regions in the entire world, home to a number of species found nowhere else on the planet, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

So, naturally, the U.S. military wants to use one of its islands as an airstrip Continue reading

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