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The Canaries: Invaded Isles of Wonder
by Howard Youth

Twenty million years ago, mild and misty laurisilva forest cloaked many parts of the world. But this "laurel jungle," as the name means in Portuguese, withered over the millennia thanks to climate change, leaving few living reminders. Last March, I stood within one of the largest remaining patches of laurisilva in the world, on the largest of the Canary Islands, Tenerife. Beneath a moss-bearded canopy of Canary Island laurel (Laurus azorica), holly (Ilex canariensis), and tree heath (Erica arborea), I watched a large, long-necked dove—an endemic Bolle's pigeon (Columba bollii)—clap off into the fog. At that moment, so far from the highways and hotels, I could easily imagine what this island was like before Spanish possession.

The laurisilva forest holds fast to steep, craggy ranges that once also sheltered the Guanche people, the aboriginal Canary Islanders. The Guanches hunted the wily native pigeon I had just seen, until they in turn became quarry for invading hordes of Spanish soldiers beginning in the 1400s. In forests such as this one, Guanches resisted for decades, but in the end, Spanish weaponry—as well as diseases Europeans brought with them—prevailed. Sickened, enslaved, and finally interbred out of existence, the Guanches vanished by the 1600s.

The Canary Islands form an archipelago off the coast of present-day Morocco that includes seven major islands and a host of small rock islets. Today, the Canary Islands are outlying pieces of Spain.

Four waves of invasion have shaped this once-isolated place. First, the Canaries became a landing site for wayward wildlife from the far-off mainland. Next came the first human occupiers, the Guanches. Then came the conquerors, the Europeans, who used the islands as stepping stones for more distant exploration, while also colonizing the archipelago. Finally, modern-day travelers such as myself constitute a fourth wave of invasion—people who each year descend upon the islands in the millions via daily flights, ships, and ferries.

The Canary Islands, while not exactly what they once were, do retain much of their uniqueness. To biologists and botanists, they are the "Galapagos of Europe" because beyond the beach chairs, buffets, and bars live creatures found nowhere else¾the descendants of the first invaders. In a general sense, the story of the Canary Islands mirrors that of many other archipelagos around the world that were colonized first by wildlife then by humans. In the details, however, it is a story unlike any other.

Castaways
Canarian wildlife have both European and North African affinities. Their ancestors colonized the islands from both regions, either via their own wing power or by hitchhiking on drifting debris washed from the mainland. The early animal and plant colonists, however, found terra firma only because successive volcanic eruptions created an underwater mountain range whose peaks eventually poked above the ocean surface, creating a part-wet, part-dry island chain.

The islands' volcanic origins are obvious from the air: Off the coasts of the easternmost islands Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, conical, treeless mountains rise from the blue-green water, their rims seeming ready to spew lava. The oldest island, Fuerteventura, dates back about 20 million years, while the younger, higher western islands of El Hierro and La Palma were formed as recently as one and two million years ago, respectively. The Canaries' most recent eruption occurred on La Palma in 1971, but almost certainly will not be their last.

Piecing together how and when species arrived on the islands and spread to other islands is challenging, speculative work. Biologists and botanists from a variety of international institutions prowl the Canary Islands' stony fields, cliffs, and misty forests, attempting to piece together species' pasts and presence. They examine fossils or head to the lab to compare genetic similarities or differences. Meanwhile, as scientists try to get a fix on the past, the mechanics of evolution chug along, and the islands’ wildlife are continually changing and facing new challenges to their survival.

Scientists have an easier time studying more recently formed islands or other isolated habitats where they can watch wildlife colonization as it occurs. Take, for example, three sites where scientists are tracking newly established plants and animals: the Indonesian island of Krakatoa, which emerged from the ocean via eruptions in 1883; the Icelandic island of Surtsey, which appeared amid a smoldering sea in 1963; and the site of a 1980 volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helen’s in Washington, where animals and plants re-appeared after ash destroyed their ecosystem.

Within weeks of the Surtsey eruption, for example, gulls gathered on the island. Not long after, scientists found the first fungi that colonized the island, then bacteria, then vascular plants. Today, hundreds of gull pairs of four species nest there, and contribute to a growing island flora via their daily droppings, which infuse nutrients into the poor soil. Seeds carried by birds from nearby islands are also changing Surtsey’s landscape.

The data collected from such places give scientists studying the Canaries a better idea of what may have happened there before and what is happening now. There is much to ponder: About a quarter of the islands' almost 2,000 vascular plant species are endemic, as are almost half of the 6,300 native arthropods, which include insects and spiders. Five bird species, along with dozens of subspecies, occur only in the Canaries.

Herpetologists revel in the islands' particularly diverse collection of lizards, all of which are endemic to the Canaries. After arriving on floating debris such as storm-driven trees, early gecko, skink, and lacerta colonists evolved into new species over the millennia. The lacertas (family Lacertidae) were particularly successful, radiating into small, medium, and large herbivorous and carnivorous species. Seven endemic species of the lacerta genus Gallotia now inhabit the islands; others have come to light from fossils.

Many herpetologists think that Canary Island lacertas evolved from an ancestor of the genus Psammodromus, whose living members now inhabit northwestern Africa and southwestern Europe, including Spain. The ancestral stock, so some hypotheses go, landed on the eastern islands, then spread west in a stepping-stone fashion of colonization and diversification. Biologists are still trying to untangle which species are most closely related, and from which species others may have evolved. Their work is now more challenging thanks to recent discoveries. For example, a new Gallotia species was found in 1996 on Tenerife; another, previously known only from fossil evidence, turned up alive in 2000 on the nearby island of La Gomera.

The Canaries share some species, and many closely related life forms, with other Atlantic islands with similar natural histories—islands that geographers lump together in the Macaronesian group. Aside from the Canaries, the Macaronesian islands include the Portuguese islands of Madeira, which lie to the north, the tiny Selvagens, situated between Madeira and the Canaries, and the farther-flung Azores and Cape Verde Islands. The plain swift (Apus unicolor), Berthelot's pipit (Anthus berthelotii), and the island canary (Serinus canaria)—ancestor of pet-store canaries—are among the animals found only within the Macaronesian group.

The Second Great Invasion
The day before my laurisilva visit, I sat in a jet descending toward Tenerife, looking out the window at a huge mountain that dominated the view. The surrounding low mountains seemed to bow to this snow-drizzled giant, called Mount Teide. During much of my exploration of the northwest corner of the island, I saw this 12,200-foot-tall volcano—Spain's tallest mountain—looming over a variety of landscapes, from Canary pine forest to barren lava fields. I wasn't the first to be impressed by it: The Guanches considered the mountain sacred and believed it was inhabited by a demon. Later, in the 1500s, a Dutch visitor wrote that it was "thought to be the highest hill that ever was found, for it may easily be seen at the least threescore miles in the sea."

Today, if you drive west from Tenerife's Rodeo Airport, you will see not only Mount Teide; you are also likely pass the town of La Matanza de Acentejo, which in English means "The Slaughter of Acentejo." There in 1494, Spanish warrior and explorer Alonso de Lugo launched 1,000 Spanish troops against the island's remaining Guanche people, who had fled the lowlands to hide in the island's thickly forested mountains. At La Matanza de Acentejo, stone-wielding Guanches ambushed Lugo and his men, killing hundreds of soldiers.

A bit farther down the highway sits another town, La Victoria de Acentejo, where Lugo returned the next year with more forces, finally crushing the Guanche resistance. Tenerife was one of the last Guanche strongholds. Today, place names, a few words, and some mummies and other artifacts are all that remain of the Guanches. As historian and geographer Alfred W. Crosby wrote in his book Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, "They were, with the possible exception of the Arawaks of the West Indies, the first people to be driven over the cliff of extinction by modern imperialism."

When Europeans first arrived, an estimated 80,000 Guanches inhabited the archipelago. Most anthropologists believe that the Guanches originated from Berbers, who likely came over by boat from North Africa around 500 B.C.E. or earlier. They colonized the islands over centuries, and once settled, they apparently lost interest in plying the seas. Instead, they spent their days herding goats, collecting mussels along the shore, and tending crops such as barley and peas, the seeds of which they brought from the mainland.

When and how often Guanche populations island-hopped remains a mystery, but over time different groups of Guanches inhabited different islands. Living in isolation, they likely developed distinctive dialects and cultural traditions. At gatherings, neighboring tribes held wrestling matches from which the islands' traditional sport, called lucha canaria ("Canary fighting"), originated. The Guanches living on the western island of La Gomera, and likely those on Tenerife, used a set of distinctive whistles to communicate across the steep slopes. Writes Crosby: "Like Darwin's Galapagos finches, they were in all likelihood descendants from a few ancestors and had evolved independently on their separate islands. The Guanches would have provided anthropologists with a classic example of divergent cultural evolution if they, too, had survived."

Compared to the islands' plants, insects, and lizards, there is not a rich assemblage of mammals—at least not native ones—on the Canaries. Eight bat species inhabit the islands; one is endemic to the Canaries, while another occurs only on Macaronesian islands. A few shrew species live there, but these have questionable origins debated by scientists—are they recent introductions or truly endemic species? The Guanches hunted native wildlife, changed the landscape through agriculture, and introduced new mammals, including goats, pigs, dogs, and a rustic form of sheep. These new arrivals undoubtedly affected the native flora and fauna. Goats nibbled down native vegetation, as they do today. Pigs roto-tilled the underbrush, and dogs caught and ate large lizards, which also may have featured in the Guanche diet.

The largest living Canary Island lacerta, a now-rare herbivore called the Hierro giant lizard (Gallotia simonyi), grows up to two feet long. However, fossil remains indicate that far larger species roamed the islands when the first human inhabitants arrived. Some probably reached five feet long. Herpetologists believe that the relatively small size of today's Canary Island lizards may be the result of centuries of predation by invasive species and habitat deterioration brought on by domestic livestock. As the amount of vegetative cover dropped and introduced predator populations rose, lizards retreated to steeper habitats or smaller crevices and shrank in size. Pressure to evade predators must have increased centuries later, after cats and rats disembarked from European ships.

The Europeans: The Third Wave
The Romans and others knew of the Canaries for centuries, but European settlement of the islands didn't begin until the 14th century, when Italian explorer Lanzarote Malocello and his expedition arrived on his now-namesake island, Lanzarote. After living on the island for years, Lanzarote was killed by Guanches, who within a century would be killed off as well, replaced by Spaniards looking for new fortune. The islands were mapped a few years after Lanzarote's landing. Then, in 1402, French explorer Jean de Bethencourt and his comrades tried to conquer the Canary Islands, claiming that they wanted to convert the natives to Christianity. Bethencourt, soon funded by Castilian King Enrique III, had limited success, capturing a few islands and encouraging farmers from France to settle there. Bethencourt set the stage for Spanish possession of the islands, but it would take almost a century more to wrest all of the islands from the Guanches.

Meanwhile, strengthened by navigational advances, the navies of European nations were competing to acquire new lands and treasure, and the Canary Islands were often the first stop on the road to riches. There, ships could be docked, repaired, and provisioned with livestock and other supplies, plus enslaved Guanches.

Throughout the 1400s, Europeans brought new animals to the island chain, among them cattle, horses, domestic sheep, feral cats, European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), black (Rattus rattus) and brown rats (R. norvegicus), and house mice (Mus domesticus). By the late 1500s, the dry eastern islands were becoming barren after thousands of introduced donkeys and camels, along with the goats, chewed down much of the fragile vegetation. In 1591, more than 1,000 donkeys were slaughtered, for fear that they would totally denude the island.

Europeans also introduced many cultivated plants and weeds, which took hold and never left the islands. After it was introduced to the islands in the late 1400s, sugar cane became the Canaries' most important crop. Forests were felled to make way for cane fields and to fuel sugar mills. Sometimes the Canary Islands were a stepping-stone for new ways of doing things and invasive species to spread to other places. Slavery, farming and livestock-breeding, and settlement construction techniques were all field-tested in the Canaries before their exportation to the New World. At the end of the 15th century Columbus brought pigs and cattle from the Canaries to the West Indies, where they wrought their own damage on the New World's pristine ecosystems.

Mammal introductions, however, did not just occur centuries ago. They have continued. In 1965, for example, someone released a pair of chipmunk-like Barbary ground squirrels (Atlantoxerus getulus) on Fuerteventura. The crags and wastes of the island resemble the rodents’ home range in nearby North Africa and provide what they need to survive. The ground squirrel is now the island's most visible non-farmyard, non-beach-going mammal. Individuals recently popped up on a few other islands, possibly carried over by people taking ferries from Fuerteventura.

In recent years, exotic birds also have flocked to the islands, thanks to transportation there by humans. According to the Spanish Ornithological Society, members of more than 100 bird species have escaped their cages or been intentionally released on the Canaries. A few established breeding populations of potential agricultural pest birds, most notably monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) and ring-necked parakeets (Psittacula krameri), now nest throughout the island chain.

Tourism: The Fourth Invasion
These days, the Canary Islands provide Europe with bananas, tobacco, and a variety of other crops, but the biggest money-earner by far is the tourism industry, which draws about 10 million visitors to the islands each year.

In the late 1960s, three decades after his rise to power, Spain's four-decade dictator Francisco Franco brought the Canaries fortune and fame by opening the islands to northern European visitors. The growth in the tourism business continues at a dizzying pace. Popular and cheap, the Canary Islands have become a bit of a cliché to Europeans, like Daytona Beach, Florida, became for vacationing Americans. But their appeal still shines through. "At four hours from London, there aren't many other options in comparison," said a travel guide publisher interviewed in The Times (London) in October 2004.

Some islands, such as La Gomera and El Hierro, remain less developed and have protected areas that embrace much of their exceptional biodiversity. On the popular tourist islands, though, shoreline development is intense and spreading inland. Canary Islands government officials now work with tourism and environmental groups to protect wild areas, and have entertained thoughts of curbing development on some islands. But proposals often bog down before becoming legislation, and the tourism industry continues to boom. Over the past few decades on Fuerteventura alone, the resident population has risen to 73,000 from 15,000. Meanwhile, each year 1.3 million tourists descend upon this island for short visits.

***

A few months after my Tenerife visit, I stood about 130 miles to the east, on the rain-starved eastern island of Fuerteventura. Lower and closer to Africa, Fuerteventura—which sits 60 miles from Morocco—rarely captures the trade-wind moisture that shrouds the mountainous western outliers. In a semi-desert setting as extreme as I could get from Tenerife's laurisilva, I watched a gray-and-brown turkey-sized bird called the houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata fuertaventurae) scuttle in zittery figure-eights amid a field of boulders, his head hidden in puffy white plumes as he advertised his virility.

After the bird strutted behind a boulder and disappeared, I drove 15 miles back to the coastal resort town of Corralejo, convinced that I’d seen one of the most bizarre courtship rituals in the animal world. As I drove, I also worried about the bird's future. Within two miles of the bustard's stony field, I passed freshly bulldozed earth, the first mark of extensive resort development that now stretches the remaining 13 miles to the Atlantic.

I later read that much of the houbara bustard habitat in the north of the island lies just outside of protected areas. As best I could tell from maps, the parading bustard—a member of an endemic island subspecies—had set up his display run just beyond the border of a natural park. With perhaps 500 individual birds divided between Fuerteventura and nearby Lanzarote, would this legally protected bird bow to the bulldozers and follow the path of the Canary Islands oystercatcher (Haematopus meadewaldoi)? The oystercatcher, a large shorebird that once nested on these islands, had gone extinct by 1940, probably due to competition with people for its mollusk prey, disturbance on its nesting grounds, and relentless attack from introduced cats and rats that preyed upon it and its eggs.

The Canary Island ark is shaky at best, but it has fared better than those of many other biologically diverse island groups. The scientific and conservation communities, as well as government officials and tourism industry groups, all recognize the need to preserve the islands' natural assets. This combined will needs to rise to the next level, resulting in firm action that protects what is left, especially in areas not currently protected as reserves. As the fourth invasion continues, hope remains that as both a European playground and a treasure trove of biodiversity, the Canary Islands will some day soon reach an equilibrium that accommodates the whims of humanity while preserving the archipelago's distinctive collection of wildlife castaways.

—Contributing editor Howard Youth wrote this article while living in Madrid, Spain. He has since moved back to the D.C. area.

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ZooGoer 34(2) 2005. Copyright 2005 Friends of the National Zoo.
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