THE RESTORATION OF GUADALUPE ISLAND

uadalupe Island rises like a rampart from the windwhipped sea off the Pacific coast of the Baja California Peninsula. As the westernmost territory in Mexico, the 26,000 hectare island is a lonely outpost for a small military garrison and a community of about 70 fishermen and their families. The island is home to over 30 plant taxa that are found nowhere else in the world. It also supports several southern California ecosystems that are now rare or threatened on the continent, including an extensive lichen flora and important remnants of unique coastal scrub and island chaparral communities. Guadalupe stirs a love-hate relationship in those that have come to know its sere, rugged landscape. Botanist Reid Moran, whose 40 years of work on Guadalupe brought attention to its unique flora, called it his “very favorite island,” but he mused that “at too close a range it has sometimes seemed a hot, ugly, weedy, insuperable rock pile that I have almost wondered, at least fleetingly, why anyone in his right mind would subject himself to climbing it” (Moran 1998). A primitive dirt road now makes traversing the island easier than it was for most of Dr. Moran’s career, but after three hours of bouncing across the island in our own cloud of dust and exhaust, we’ve also wondered what lures us back year after year. Yet, just as the barren beauty of Guadalupe and the excitement of finding rare and exotic plants seduced Dr. Moran, we too are captivated by the island’s ecosystem. For that reason, we have committed ourselves to protecting and restoring the remaining pockets of its unique flora and fauna with the hope that the island can eventually recover some of its original biodiversity. Thankfully, the political climate in Mexico now exists to help this dream become reality. Over the past decade Mexico has become a world leader in the conservation of island ecosystems, protecting more than 25 islands by removing damaging inCypress forest on Guadalupe Island showing signs of goat herbivory. The islets Toro and Zapato are in the far distance. All photographs courtesy of Island Conservation unless otherwise noted.