Irish presenter Liz Bonnin really does aim to go that bit deeper with her major new series on the Galapagos, writes Sarah Marshall

Marine mammal, birds, fish and reptile populations have almost halved since 1970, according to a report which is a “wake-up call” to tackle the crisis in the world’s oceans.

Reports that paddle-boarders encountered a humpback whale off West Cork on June 17 have made east coast dwellers green with envy.

AT NIGHT, here on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries, we hear the pardelas — Cory’s Shearwaters — mewling as they cruise high above the lights of the harbour; their calls echoing against the sheer rock face that rises 1,000m directly above the port beach.

Britain: A “poo bus”, which runs on human and household waste, goes into regular service this month. Powered by biomethane gas, the Bio-Bus will use waste from more than 32,000 households along its 24km route.

Veteran British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has undergone surgery to insert a pacemaker.

Few have explored the remote volcanic islands of the Galapagos archipelago, an otherworldly landscape inhabited by the world’s largest tortoises and other fantastical creatures that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

SOME people hate their jobs; they’d prefer to be film stars, great artists or captains of industry.

A man who has sailed the wrong way round the world to avoid pirates will get a hero’s welcome when he sails in to his home town this weekend.

LONESOME GEORGE passed away ‘peacefully’ at the Charles Darwin Research Centre in the Galapagos.

Lonesome George, the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation icon, has died of unknown causes, the Galapagos National Park said.

A GIANT tortoise which helped shape Darwin’s ideas about evolution and was thought to have been extinct for 150 years may be living a secret life in the Galapagos Islands.

Ports and beaches were temporarily shut and islanders and coastal residents ordered to higher ground up and down Latin America’s Pacific seaboard ahead of the tsunami surge triggered by the killer Japanese quake. But it did little damage.

The Way of the Panda

POOR old Iceland is in the dog-house.

LONESOME George, the famous Galapagos tortoise, is described in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s rarest living creature.

THE News of the World had for much of its colourful life the proud motto ‘All human life is there’ inscribed beneath it’s bold, red masthead.

A project to wean the Galapagos Islands off fossil fuels, which includes three giant wind turbines on one of the World Heritage site islands, was officially launched today.

IT IS to be hoped the threatened Canarian giant lizards will not fall victim to the likes of Jereme James, charged with smuggling three endangered iguana into the USA using his false leg.

ECUADOR says tourism is threatening the Galapagos Islands and has asked Unesco to add the habitat that inspired the theory of evolution to its endangered list, the culture agency said yesterday.

ON November 3, the Irish Examiner reported that the Galapagos Islands, a World heritage site, were considered by experts to be “in serious trouble” due to the level of population and tourism growth.

ACCORDING to the Examiner of June 26, the light died, last month, for the oldest known living animal.

A 176-year-old tortoise, believed by some to have been owned by Charles Darwin, has died at the Australian zoo owned by “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin.

More than 37 tons of cocaine, with an estimated street value of €2bn were confiscated during five seizures at sea this autumn, the US Coastguard said.

A 2,000-gallon fuel tank that fell into waters off the Galapagos Islands has created a slick that threatens to contaminate rare wildlife, scientists say.

The bodies of 15 sea lions have been found in Ecuador's Galapagos Islands with their teeth and sexual organs extracted.

Ecuador has declared a state of emergency for the Galapagos islands.

The spillage of more than 150,000 gallons of diesel oil from an Ecuadorean tanker near the Galapagos Islands is a "catastrophe", the environmentalist David Bellamy has warned.

More than 150,000 gallons of diesel oil has escaped from an Ecuadorean tanker washed up on one of the Galapagos Islands.

Ecuador has asked the US for help in preventing an environmental disaster posed by a diesel fuel spill in the ecologically fragile Galapagos Islands.