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GalApagos Islands[gulap´ugOs] Pronunciation Key [Span.,=tortoises], or ArchipiElago de ColOn[ArchEpyA´lAgO thA kOlOn´] Pronunciation Key, Pacific archipelago belonging to Ecuador, 3,029 sq mi (7,845 sq km), c.650 mi (1,045 km) W of Ecuador, on the equator. They were discovered in 1535 by the Spanish navigator TomAs de Bertanga and named for the gigantic (up to 500 lb/227 kg.) land tortoises that are now facing extinction. Ecuador claimed the islands in 1832. There are 13 large islands and many smaller ones; Isabela (Albemarle) (c.2,250 sq mi/5,827 sq km) is the largest. Largely desolate lava piles, the islands have little vegetation or cultivable soil except on the upper slopes of high volcanic mountains that receive heavy rains from the prevailing trade winds and are mantled by dense vegetation. The climate is modified by the cool Humboldt Current. The islands are famous for their wild life. Besides tortoises, there are land and sea iguanas and hosts of unusual birds, such as the flightless cormorant, which exists nowhere else. Shore lagoons teem with marine life. Early travelers to this naturalist's paradise, now a wildlife sanctuary, were astonished by the tameness of the animals. The GalApagos were visited (1835) by Charles Darwin in the famous voyage of the Beagle. He gathered an impressive body of evidence there that was used later in support of his theory of natural selection. Although buccaneers, seeking food, made inroads on the fauna, real depredations did not begin until the arrival in the 19th cent. of the whalers and then the oilers, who killed the tortoises wholesale for food and oil. During World War II the United States maintained an air base there for the defense of the Panama Canal. Since 1967 a satellite tracking station has been manned on the islands. The GalApagos remain one of the few places in the world where naturalists can study living survivals of species arrested at various evolutionary stages. They are an increasingly popular tourist spot.
See C. Darwin, The Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle (1840); B. Nelson, Galapagos: Islands of Birds (1968); I. W. Thornton, Darwin's Islands (1971); N. E. Hickin, Animal Life of the Galapagos (1980); J. Hickman, The Enchanted Islands: The Galapagos Discovered (1985).
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