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Guadalupe Island () is a volcanic island located off the western coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula and about southwest of the city of Ensenada in the state of Baja California, in the Pacific Ocean. The various volcanoes are extinct or dormant. In 2005 Guadalupe Island and its surrounding waters and islets were declared a biosphere reserve to restore its vegetation (decimated by ) and to protect its population of marine mammals and birds. The island was a popular destination for great white shark cage diving before a tourism ban was put in place in 2022. Guadalupe Island is inhabited only by scientists, military personnel operating a weather station, and a small group of seasonal fishermen. The island is mostly arid and has very little surface water.
The two other Mexican island groups in the Pacific Ocean that are not on the continental shelf are the Revillagigedo Islands and Rocas Alijos. Guadalupe Island and its islets are the westernmost region of Mexico.
Campo Oeste ("West Camp", also called Campo Tepeyac, with 15 buildings) is a small community of abalone and lobster fishermen, located on the western coast, specifically on the north side of West Anchorage, a bay that provides protection from the strong winds and swells that whip the islands during winter. Generators provide electricity, and a military vessel brings of freshwater. The number of fishermen varies annually depending on the fishing season. Ten months of the year the 30 families of the fishing cooperative " Abuloneros and Langosteros of Guadalupe Island" are present.
Additional temporary fishing camps are Campo Norte ("North Camp", four buildings), Campo Lima ( Campo Corrals) (one building) and Arroyitos (four buildings).
At the southern tip, on Melpómene Cove, there is a weather station staffed by a detachment from the Mexican Ministry of the Navy. The site is called Campamento Sur ("South Encampment").
Campo Bosque was established as a temporary camp in 1999 in the cypress forest in the north. The camp houses members of the Cooperative Farming Society "Francisco Javier Maytorena, S.C. of R.L." and removes goats from the island and sells them in the State of Sonora, with permission of Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and the support of the Secretariat of the Navy.
Campo Pista is located at the small airport, near the center of the island (, elevation: 592 m, direction: 05/23). Airport Isla Guadalupe (ICAO Code MMGD) has a runway. At the end of the runway near threshold 5 is the wreckage of a Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar, Avioneta Isla Guadalupe . panoramio.com which overshot the runway during landing. A North American B-25J-30/32 Mitchell, BMM-3501 (c/n 44-86712), bomber wrecked on the opposite end of the runway, after suffering serious damage in trying to take-off overloaded (). The B-25 wreckage was removed between October 2005 and June 2006.
Because Guadalupe Island is located within a biosphere Nature reserve, anyone visiting the island must obtain a permit from the Mexican government; this means the communities on the island are Closed city.http://sdsharkdiving.com/isla-guadalupe/ Sdsharkdiving.com/isla-guadalupe. San Diego Shark Diving. Isla Guadalupe White Shark Trip – FAQs. Retrieved August 17, 2018.http://www.squalodivers.com/guadalupe-island-giants-fortress/ Squalo Divers. Guadalupe Island, Giant Fortress. March 27, 2017. Retrieved August 17, 2018.
Elsewhere, the other islets are very small and close to the shore, all less than away:
Most precipitation occurs over the winter months with a strong influence of northwestern winds and .
Rainfall averages near sea level at the south end, but appears to be much more at the high north end. An estimate for the rainfall in the northern highlands is possible by way of taking Pinus radiata as an indicator, which is native to that area of the island. In other places where Pinus radiata is native, it grows best with about of rainfall but under some conditions can survive with as little as half that much. The effective moisture is much greater because of fog drip.Moran, Reid (1868) "The Flora of Guadalupe Island, Mexico", in Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences
Northern elephant seals were thought to be extinct by 1884 until a remnant population of eight individuals was discovered on Guadalupe Island in 1892 by a Smithsonian expedition, which promptly killed several of them for their collections. The northern elephant seals managed to survive, and were finally protected by the Mexican government in 1922.
Guadalupe shares the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion with the Channel Islands of California in the United States, but the island was at one time practically denuded of all plants higher than a few centimeters by up to 100,000The maximum population that was reached in the late 19th century; nearly two feral goats per acre and more than four per hectare: León de la Luz et al (2003) .
Originally brought to the island in the 19th century by whalers and sealers for provisions when stopping over, the population eventually eliminated most vegetation; the number of feral goats declined to a few thousand. Before this collapse, the main impact of the feral goat population was about the turn of the 19th/20th century. Naturalist A. W. Anthony wrote in 1901:
"It is directly due to the despised Billy-goat that many interesting species of plants formerly abundant are now extinct, and also that one or more of the birds peculiar to the island has disappeared, and others are following rapidly."
After the crash, the feral goat population once again grew, this time more slowly, until it had reached the new, lower carrying capacity at maybe 10,000–20,000 in modern times. The island had been a nature conservancy area since August 16, 1928, making it one of the oldest reserves in Mexico. Local extinction of the feral goats was long envisioned, but logistical difficulties, such as island size and lack of suitable spots for landing and encamping hunters and material, prevented this. In 2002, the Mexican government (including SEMARNAT) and the conservation group Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas began extirpating the feral goats. In June 2005, after many years of false starts, the Mexican government had almost completed a round-up and evacuation of the remaining feral goat population. In 2007, the feral goat extirpation program ended (10,000 feral goats were killed). Guadalupe Island was designated a biosphere nature reserve on April 25, 2005.
French sea captain Auguste Duhaut-Cilly remarked on the tall trees on the north of Guadalupe Island as he sailed past on January 2, 1827. Of the four large tree species on Guadalupe Island (the Brahea edulis, Guadalupe cypress, island oak, and Pinus radiata), there were only old individuals left; the California juniper population had entirely disappeared. As the feral goats ate any seedlings that managed to germinate, no regeneration of trees was possible. Water, formerly plentiful as the common fogs condensed in the forests of the northern end of the island, today only occurs in a few scattered pools and springs. Because the springs were a critical emergency water supply for the human inhabitants, protective measures including feral goat fences were installed beginning in 2000, allowing new seedlings of many species to survive for the first time in 150 years. Seacology, a non-profit environmental group located in Berkeley, CA, provided funding to the Island Conservation & Ecology Group for the construction of 10 fenced to keep feral goats out of the most sensitive areas of Guadalupe Island.
In November 1850, U.S. Army Lt. George H. Derby passed the island on his expedition in the U.S. Transport Invincible. He described it thus: "This island is about 15 miles length and 5 in width. It is rocky + mountainous but capped with vegetation and is reputed to be thickly inhabited by wild goats of unusual size. Water is found upon the eastern shore and the Island is frequently visited by small vessels engaged in the capture of the sea elephant numbers of which animals are found upon its coast."
Many islands or marine species that reside on or near Guadalupe also frequent the Channel Islands, and vice versa. In stark contrast to the rampant extinction of terrestrial life that happened at the same time, Guadalupe was the last refuge for the northern elephant seal ( Mirounga angustirostris) and the Guadalupe fur seal ( Arctocephalus townsendi) in the 1890s. The island has been a pinniped sanctuary since 1975.
Nautilus Dive Adventures, Why Guadalupe Island is the perfect Great White Sharks Habitat?
Guadalupe is considered one of the best spots in the world for sightings of the great white shark ( Carcharhodon carcharias
Travel.padi.com. PADI Travel. Diving in Guadalupe Island. Retrieved August 17, 2018.
The island has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International.
A ninth habitat type, California juniper woodland and extending on the central plateau below the cypress forest, was entirely gone by 1906. What other endemic lifeforms underwent coextinction with it will forever remain unknown.
Plants:
There have been 5–6 extinctions of birds:
Globally extinct plant taxa from Guadalupe Island are:
Extinctions
Numerous taxa have gone Extinction due to the habitat destruction by the , which in turn rendered the endemic fauna vulnerable to predation by introduced and adverse weather by depriving them of shelter.
and one species of plant incertae sedis
Notes
Its time zone is Pacific Standard Time
External links
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