Island in the Galapagos Archipelago
Baltra Island
(
Spanish
:
Isla Baltra
) is a small
island
in the
Galapagos Archipelago
in
Ecuador
. It is a small flat island located near the center of the chain and includes
Seymour Airport
(GPS), originally established by the
United States Air Force
to help monitor and protect western access to the
Panama Canal
. Baltra is not part of the
Galapagos National Park
but some effort has been made to protect the local environment, including modernization of the airport and the reintroduction of the
island's land iguanas
.
Names
[
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]
Baltra
is a
Spanish
surname
particularly common in
Chile
, but no records are known that explain which person was the namesake for the island. It is first attested in the form
Isla Baltra
in the
British Admiralty
's 1927
South America Pilot
,
having been added at some point after the first 1915 edition. The Admiralty copy of the 1915 pilot bears the handwritten notation "Names. __ Baltra I. & Puerto Nunez H 214/15" indicating that the names should be added to the next edition on the basis of the information in a document filed as "H 214/15", but this document cannot be found and is presumed lost.
[2]
The island had previously been known as
South Seymour
in honor of the
British naval
officer
Hugh Seymour
,
who served during the
Napoleonic Wars
. Together with the neighboring
North Seymour Island
, Baltra is still sometimes known as the Seymours or the Seymour Group.
Geography
[
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]
Baltra was created by
geological uplift
.
Flora
[
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]
Baltra is very arid and vegetation consists of
salt bushes
,
prickly pear cactus
and
palo santo
trees.
Wildlife
[
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]
Baltra is not within the boundaries of the
Galapagos National Park
. The
Galapagos land iguana
is the subject of an active reintroduction campaign on the island. The American Captain G. Allan Hancock moved a population of the iguanas to
North Seymour Island
in the early 1930s ahead of the construction of the US air base on Baltra. The development of Baltra led to the local population's extinction by 1954 but the North Seymour colony thrived and became the breeding stock for the successful
Charles Darwin Research Station
captive breeding
program in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the land iguanas were reintroduced to Baltra. As of 1997, the new colony comprised 97 iguanas, 13 of which were born on Baltra.
Transport
[
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]
Seymour Airport
was established by the
United States
Air Force
during
World War II
. Aircraft stationed at Seymour patrolled the
Eastern Pacific
for
Japanese
and
German
submarines
, particularly on the routes to the
Panama Canal
. The facilities were transferred to the
government
of
Ecuador
after the war. The old airfield and the foundations of buildings from the US base are still visible, but the field has been moved and modernized. Since 1986, air travel to the Galapagos has been shared with
San Cristobal Airport
on
San Cristobal Island
but private planes must fly to Seymour as it is the only airport with overnight facilities for planes. Seymour also continues service as a base for the
Ecuadorian Air Force
. The most recent modernization began in 2011 and was completed in 2013, after which
ECOGAL
,
[4]
a subsidiary of the
Argentinian
Corporacion America
,
[5]
will enjoy a 15-year concession to the location.
[6]
ECOGAL has promoted the new airport as the "first ecological airport worldwide" due to various improvements to its energy consumption, rainwater recovery, waste recycling, and so on.
[7]
Visitors arriving at Seymour are driven by bus to two docks, one located by a small bay where tour boats away passengers and the second the dock on the
Itabaca Channel
for the ferry to
Santa Cruz
.
References
[
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]
Citations
[
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]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- South America Pilot
(2nd ed.),
Taunton
:
Hydrographic Department
, 1927
.
- McEwen, Alec (July 1988),
"The English Place-Names of the Galapagos"
,
The Geographical Journal
, vol. 154, London: Royal Geographical Society, pp. 234?242,
doi
:
10.2307/633849
,
JSTOR
633849
.
External links
[
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]