Transcripts for CNN The Wonder List With Bill Weir 20150309 02:11:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
you know it s ironic. i saw so much wildlife roaming free but to catch the one creature that threatens most of them, i had to visit a glass case. this is the rogue s gallery of rats. as careful custodians or the government of ecuador, the charles darwin foundation keeps a catalog of life both native and invasive. these are the different beaks? we have a woodpecker finch. this is a record of change from darwin s favorite finches to the snake that s developed a taste fof seafood. these guys have adopted to eating fish. i heard about this. so they find it hard to find little critters on land and they go into the water. but the fate of tp galapagos an other wild corners of this planet ultimately depend on how
bit. arturo is back in the park s top spot once again and says that many of the fishermen, once at odds with eco-tourism, have since joined their ranks. you can fish in galapagos as long as it s for your own consumption. so back on the mabel oswaldo is catching dinner, yellow-fin tuna, which will not go gently. it s still fighting. over a third of the humans on this planet get their protein out of the ocean, but we are at a real tipping point. without conscientious consumpti consumption, without common sense, it s only a matter of time before the wild tuna goes the way of the giant tortoise. on his trip to galapagos darwin noticed that these guys were being overhunted, but they still brought a few dozen back aboard the beagle ate them on the way
thought that we can still do it. with 3 billion people more, the task would be harder. we ll do our best. the man in charge of the park knows that, without tourists, there would be no park, but too many people could turn galapagos into another hawaii, where 95% of native species were wiped out by too much change too fast. so he is proposing a cap of less than a quarter million visitors a year. the way tourism is going up, we will probably reach by 2016 that limit. but he says galapagos can only thrive with the right kind of visitor, the eco-tourist willing to pay top dollar to see a blue-footed boobie, but not demand a golf course and water park as part of the package. he wants people who will happily abide by strict limits on human
which is easier, sniping a quarter million goats or poisoning a million rats on an island like this or convincing the locals that these are good ideas? the more challenging part is working in partnership, you know, with communities so that essentially they make the decisions, that they don t want, you know, rats and cats on their island. and what they want is mockingbirds and floreana tortoises back on their island and not to have, you know, impacts to their crops. right. but if you think his job is hard, meet francesca cunningham. she s devoted her life to saving the most endangered species in galapagos, the mangrove finch. there s an abandoned nest up here.