Galapagos Isles Collection

The Galapagos Isles Collection features the Giant Tortoise and the Land Iguana with many exotic inhabitants captured in the designs to support the Galapagos National Park. This awesome collection will be released in 2012.

Giant Tortoise	Land Iguana

Galapagos Isles Collection CD
Click to hear samples of their beautiful wildlife sound tracks...coming soon!

THE "ENCHANTED ISLANDS"

The nineteen islands that make up the Galapagos lie along the equator one thousand kilometers west of Ecuador.  The islands are named for the giant tortoises that live there. Galapagos has been called "a living museum and showcase of evolution." The animals on the islands influenced British nature scientist Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution by natural selection. Darwin wrote, ''we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact -- that mystery of mysteries -- the first appearance of new beings on earth.'' It was the remarkable articulation of that fact, the uniqueness and complexity of life on those islands, that gave Darwin the basis for working out his theory of natural selection. The pressures that shaped the character of natural life as Darwin found it on the Galápagos were almost entirely free of human influence. One hundred years later, in nineteen fifty-nine, the Ecuadorian government declared almost all of the islands a national park. The Charles Darwin Foundation was formed the same year to study and protect the plants and animals on the islands.

The Galapagos Islands are home to many unusual birds, reptiles and small mammals. Some of the animals live nowhere else on Earth. The tortoise is the most famous Galapagos reptile but the marine iguana is also unusual. It is the only iguana in the world that goes into the ocean. The marine iguana eats seaweed and can dive at least fifteen meters below the ocean surface staying down there for more than thirty minutes. Several strange birds also live on the Galapagos. One of them is the only penguin that lives on the equator. Another is the frigate bird that has loose skin on its throat that it can blow up into a huge red balloon-like structure. It does this to attract females that make observation flights over large groups of males. The Galapagos also are noted for a bird that likes water better than land or air. The cormorant is able to fly in all the other places it lives around the world but the Galapagos cormorant has extremely short wings that cannot support flight but work well for swimming. The islands also have a large collection of small birds called Darwin's finches. Charles Darwin studied the finches carefully when he visited the Galapagos in eighteen thirty-five. He separated the birds by the shapes of their beaks. He discovered that finches that lived in different places and ate different foods had different shaped beaks.

In nineteen seventy-eight, the islands were the first place named to the World Heritage List by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.  Recently, however, UNESCO added the islands to its World Heritage in Danger list.  The main reason is the increase in the number of visitors to the islands. The World Heritage Committee said increased tourism, immigration and invasive species threaten the animals of the Galapagos. Many of these animals are found nowhere else in the world.