Formative Assessment 2

Formative Assessment 2 - Title Page

The effectiveness of land-sharing for biodiversity conservation – A behavioural study of Galapagos Giant Tortoises in agricultural and tourist areas on Santa Cruz Island.

N. Pike, Stephen Blake, Iain J. Gordon, Lin Schwarzkopf

Changing land-use for agriculture and tourism on Santa Cruz Island poses an increasing concern for the migratory cycles of an already critically endangered species, the Galapagos Giant Tortoise (Chelonoidis spp.) This research aims to determine what factors influence tortoise activity on these farms. The study assesses behavioural observations using the focal sampling method and thermal imaging to investigate factors affecting activity using Dirichlet regression analysis. The results demonstrate several important land management implications, most notably that land use type and vegetation properties prove to be key factors effecting the activity patterns of tortoises in the agricultural regions of Santa Cruz Island. This suggests that adaptive land management techniques could be implemented to support successful shared land-use between agriculture, tourism and conservation.

Galapagos Giant Tortoise (Chelonoidis spp) biodiversity, landsharing agriculture, tourism