Eco-trends in the Galapagos.

• Position: ECOLOGY

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Under heavy skies and ram squalls brought by rare El Niño storms, the Fabricio Valverde Recycling Center in the Galápagos Islands is unprepossessing. Mosquitoes flit around florescent tube lighting in its little-visited information hut. Amid clattering machinery, workers feed empty glass bottles into a grinder in the open-sided sheds; others bind bales of crushed plastic and cardboard, stacking them to the girders in preparation for shipment to the South American mainland.

The center, set up in 2004 by the Fundación Galápagos Ecuador, a non-profit conservation outfit funded by tour companies operating in the Galápagos Islands, recycles 70 percent of the non-organic waste produced on Santa Cruz, the most populated island in the remote Pacific archipelago. Using equipment provided by the European Union and the Inter-American Development Bank, the workers turn organic waste into compost; recycle colored glass as sidewalk paving for use in Puerto Ayora, the islands' largest town; and pack up recyclable cardboard, paper, plastic, and clear glass to prepare for shipment to recycling plants in Ecuador.

It comes as a surprise to many tourists to learn that the Galápagos Islands need a recycling center at all. After all, their famously approachable natural splendors, heralded in 1978 in UNESCO's first list of World Heritage Sites, rank among the best-protected areas in the world. Ecuador, which declared the archipelago a national park in 1959, maintains strict quarantine-style controls over the islands, spraying incoming flights, inspecting all marine and air transport on arrival, and screening passengers' baggage for organic matter. Tourism is controlled by means of permits issued to a limited number of cruise operators, and tourist groups land at designated sites within the park boundaries, accompanied at all times by a park-authorized biologist.

The well-funded Galápagos National Park Service has also won widespread plaudits for its zealous protection of the islands' unique flora and fauna. Supported by scientists at the Charles Darwin Research Station, park authorities have reduced the illegal fishing of endangered species such as sea cucumbers and hammerhead sharks; successfully eradicated some introduced species, including island-specific populations of wild goats, pigs, and rats originally brought by nineteenth-century pirates and whalers; and re-introduced breeding populations of the giant tortoise on eight Galápagos...