Galápagos snapdragon numbers rise from six to twenty-eight after three-decade effort

A recent study in Nature Conservation documents a modest but notable recovery of the Galápagos snapdragon, a shrub once on the brink of extinction. Surveys in the early 2000s found only six wild specimens surviving in cracks of basalt on the lava flows of Darwin Volcano. Over the past thirty years, the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galápagos National Park Directorate collected seeds, grew 94 young plants in the Charles Darwin Research Station’s nurseries, and placed them in deep fissures at Playa Tortuga Negra and surrounding lava fields.

Those efforts have lifted the count of mature, flowering individuals to 28. For the first time in years, the transplanted adults have produced seeds that germinated naturally, although a subsequent dry spell killed the seedlings. Botanists continue to track the plants’ health and reproduction in the arid northern Isabela region.