As Pablo took us around the Galapagos Islands, he told us about invasive species. After spending hours this fall removing buckthorn from my yard, I sympathize with trying to fight invasive species from taking over the native plants. We asked him if anything could be done to fight the raspberry, feral pig, feral goat, rats and other invaders. He told us a story about one of the smaller Galapagos Islands. They tried to rid the island of the feral goats. On an island the size of Isabella, this would be an impossible task. But this was a small island. First they brought in sharp shooters. (Here Pablo would imitate the sound of guns firing). The goats would freak out, run around, and many would get shot. Only the goats smart enough to stand still in the brush during the chaos lived. So then the scientists brought in dogs. Again, only the smartest goats survived the dogs and guns. So the feral goats remaining were smaller in number but higher in intelligence. So the next step was to take a goat, castrate him, inject him full of hormones, insert a GPS device into his body and set him free. After a week the scientists would locate him, bring in the sharpshooters, and kill all the goats except for the one with the GPS. The one with the GPS was named Judas. After that goat massacre, Judas would be sent off on the island again to make new friends only to have them shot the next week. Every week Judas would make new friends until there were no friends on the island left to make. The result was successful eradication of feral goats on that island.
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