Galápagos $200 Fee: Only 45% Goes to the National Park

In the last year for which anybody has published the receipts, the Galápagos entrance tax raised $17,954,142 and the national park was credited with $8,079,363.90 of it. That is 45 per cent. The other $9,874,778.10 went to three municipalities, five parish councils, a coordinating council and a biosecurity agency. The fee doubled on 1 August 2024 and the proportions did not move.

Silence Index — D-173

Popular, with quiet hours

Ranks 85 of 99 scored dossiers — quieter than 14% of the others we have scored. A low score is not a warning; it describes who else will be standing next to you.

How the total is weighted. These are the fixed weights of the four inputs, the same on every dossier — not this place’s scores. We do not publish per-input bars, because the per-input values were never recorded article by article and inventing four plausible numbers that sum to the total would be a fabrication dressed as a chart.

Footfall pressure — visitors measured against the ground that absorbs them30%

Access friction — permits, caps, seasons, boats, weather windows30%

Acoustic floor — how close the nearest engine is20%

Unresolved questions — what the record still cannot settle20%

This dossier was scored before 2 September 2026, when the fourth input became night darkness. It keeps the input it was reasoned with until it is re-scored at its next source re-check; the methodology page records the change.

The index is a desk instrument scored by this publication, not a field measurement. How it is calculated, and where it fails.

What this dossier is built from

Nobody from this publication has been to Galápagos. This is a paper exercise, and the paper is unusually good: an Ecuadorian tax has to be created by a numbered instrument, and the instruments are online. What follows is assembled from the resolution that set the current tariff; the technical report and the legal opinion that preceded it; the 1998 special law and the 2015 organic law that replaced it, with the 2017 regulation under it; the national park's own visitor reports and press releases; the executive decree creating the biosecurity agency; the National Assembly's record of its own scrutiny of the increase; UNESCO and IUCN heritage records; the US Development Finance Corporation and the Inter-American Development Bank on the Galápagos debt conversion; a Nature Conservancy case study from 2001 that is the only document we found which tracks the fee's earlier history; Ecuador's statistics institute; the GeoNames gazetteer; and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index.

Where we have done arithmetic on published figures, we say so in the sentence. Where a figure has not been published, we leave the column empty.

What popular coverage gets wrong

The version in circulation is that the $200 is the park's money. It circulates in operator FAQs, in conservation-charity appeals, in the travel sections that covered the rise in early 2024, and — this is the part that matters — in the mouths of Ecuadorian ministers. Appearing before the National Assembly's Biodiversity Commission on 20 March 2024, the environment minister Sade Fritschi described the arrangement as fifty per cent to the national park for maintenance and growth and fifty per cent to the province's autonomous governments. The Assembly's own bulletin records it that way.

The instrument in force says 45 per cent. Article 2 of Resolución No. 002-CGREG-24-02-2024, adopted by the plenary of the Consejo de Gobierno on 24 February 2024, lists eleven beneficiaries by name: the Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos at 45 per cent; the Consejo de Gobierno itself at 20; the municipal council of Santa Cruz at 10.90, San Cristóbal at 8.50 and Isabela at 5.60; the rural parish councils of Bellavista, El Progreso, Santa María, Santa Rosa and Tomás de Berlanga at 1 per cent each; and the Agencia de Regulación y Control de la Bioseguridad y Cuarentena para Galápagos at 5. Those add to 100. Nine of the eleven are local government or a coordinating body. The fee is not a park ticket. It is a provincial tax on arrival, of which the park is the largest single recipient and a minority one.

The second thing coverage gets wrong is that it treats the increase as new revenue for conservation. It is mostly a repair to an old number, and the arithmetic is in the next section but one.

The only year anybody published the receipts

The Consejo de Gobierno's technical report of 18 December 2023, prepared by its technical secretary Andrea Viviana Albán Ortega and approved by the provincial tourism committee, is the document that made this dossier possible. It prints the institutional receipts for 2019 line by line. This is what the split looks like when it is money rather than percentages.

Total collected in 2019: $17,954,142. In 2018 it was $17,832,121.
Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos: $8,079,363.90.
The three municipalities together: $4,488,535 — Santa Cruz $1,957,001, San Cristóbal $1,526,102, Isabela $1,005,432.
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos: $3,590,828.40.
The five parish councils: $897,707.10, which is $179,541.42 each.
Agencia de Bioseguridad: $897,707.10.

Those six lines sum to the total exactly. They are also, so far as we can establish, the last institution-by-institution figures the Ecuadorian state has published for this tax. Everything after 2019 is a headline number.

The headline numbers are these, all from the national park's own release of 11 February 2025: $14.6 million in 2022, $17.9 million in 2023, $22.1 million in 2024. It is worth pausing on 2023. The technical report, written in December of that year, projected $19,041,000 for it. The park later reported $17.9 million. The forecast on which the doubling was argued overshot the year it was written in by about $1.1 million. We note that without drawing a conclusion from it; forecasts miss.

The fifty per cent that became forty-five

There is a floor in the statute. Article 29 of the Ley Orgánica de Régimen Especial de la Provincia de Galápagos, in force since Registro Oficial Supplement 520 of 11 June 2015, reads: "Al menos el 50% del total del valor que se recaude por concepto de la tasa por ingreso y conservación de las áreas naturales protegidas, serán asignados a la Autoridad Ambiental Nacional a través de la unidad administrativa desconcentrada a cargo de las Áreas Naturales Protegidas de Galápagos" — at least 50 per cent, to the national environmental authority, through the deconcentrated unit in charge of the protected areas. That unit is the park directorate.

The sequence, as the record gives it, runs like this. Resolución 027-CGREG-03-IX-2015 set the distribution shortly after the law. The Consejo de Gobierno's own legal opinion No. 126-DAJ-2023, by its legal director Hernán Santos Torres and dated 20 December 2023, describes that 2015 allocation as giving the park 50 per cent, later split into 45 for the park and 5 for biosecurity. The technical report states the mechanism plainly: "la Resolución 029 del año 2016 reforma el ITEM 2 determinando que la Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos recibirá el 45% y la Agencia de Bioseguridad para Galápagos el 5%." The 2024 resolution repeals 029-CGREG-31-X-2016 and re-enacts the same 45 and 5.

Two readings are available and we are not going to pick between them. On the first, the statutory floor is breached: the law names one recipient for the 50 per cent, the park unit, and the park unit receives 45. On the second, it is not: article 82 of the 2017 regulation to the law provides that the biosecurity agency shall be financed by the national environmental authority to the tune of at least 5 per cent of what that authority collects, and the executive decree of 5 October 2012 that created the agency attaches it to the Ministry of the Environment. On that reading the 50 per cent arrives at the environmental authority and 5 of it is passed onward internally, leaving the park with 45. Both readings are constructible from documents on government servers. What is not constructible is a discussion of the question, because the technical report that justified doubling the fee quotes article 29's 50 per cent and never returns to it.

What a foreign adult actually hands over

The entrance tax is not the only charge at the door. Every tourist also needs a Transit Control Card, issued by the Consejo de Gobierno under article 44 of the organic law, bought at check-in in Quito or Guayaquil, and costing USD 20. It is not in the five-way split. The council keeps it.

So the ledger for one foreign adult, at the counter, on the day, comes to $220. Our arithmetic on the published rates and the published percentages divides it as follows.

Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos — $90.00 (45% of $200)
Consejo de Gobierno — $60.00 ($40, being 20% of $200, plus the whole $20 card)
The three municipalities — $50.00 (Santa Cruz $21.80, San Cristóbal $17.00, Isabela $11.20)
The five parish councils — $10.00, at $2 each
Agencia de Bioseguridad — $10.00

On that reckoning the park's share of what a foreign adult pays to enter Galápagos is 40.9 per cent, and the coordinating council's is 27.3. Push it out to the year and the comparison sharpens. Take 2024: 279,277 visitors and $22.1 million collected, both from the park. Forty-five per cent of that is $9,945,000 for the park and 20 per cent is $4,420,000 for the council. If every one of those 279,277 visitors also bought a $20 card, the card would have raised $5,585,540, and the council's total take from the visitor would have been about $10,005,540 — more than the park's. That is a ceiling and we label it one: card revenue is not published, some arrivals are exempt, and we have found no audited figure. But the ceiling sits above the park's floor, and nobody in the public record appears to have put the two columns next to each other.

The same $22.1 million works out at $79.13 per visitor across every category, and $35.61 per visitor for the park. Of the 55 per cent that leaves the park, $6,630,000 in 2024 went to the three municipalities and five parishes on our arithmetic — about $263 for every one of the 25,244 people the statistics institute counted in the province at the 2015 island census.

The before column, in real money

Article 17 of the 1998 special law, Registro Oficial 278 of 18 March 1998, set the foreign adult rate at USD 100. It was still USD 100 on 31 July 2024. Ecuador's consumer prices are dollar prices, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI-U annual index stood at 163.0 in 1998 and 313.7 in 2024. On that series, $100 of 1998 money is $192.45 of 2024 money. The doubled foreign fee is worth about 4 per cent more in real terms than the fee it replaced. Twenty-six years of unindexed tariff were repaired in one step and very little more than repaired.

The Ecuadorian column reads differently. The 1998 law charged nationals and residents USD 6; the 2024 resolution charges USD 30. Six 1998 dollars are $11.55 in 2024 money. The domestic fee is therefore about 2.6 times its 1998 real value, against 1.04 for the foreign one. Whatever the increase was, in real terms it fell hardest on Ecuadorians. The graduated schedule softens that at the edges — $15 for the over-65s, for under-12s, for holders of a CONADIS disability card and for transient residents, $50 for foreign students enrolled at Ecuadorian institutions, $100 for adults from CAN and Mercosur states, nothing at all for children under two — but the multiple is what it is.

The split has been re-cut before, and comprehensively. Article 18 of the 1998 law divided the money seven ways: 40 per cent to the national park, 25 to the municipalities, 10 to the provincial council, 10 to the now-abolished Instituto Nacional Galápagos, 5 to the marine reserve, 5 to inspection and quarantine and 5 to the National Navy. The Nature Conservancy's 2001 case study, which prints its own version of the post-1998 shares — 20 per cent to municipalities and 5 to the Ministry of Environment, where the law says 25 and nothing — records that before the 1998 law only about 30 per cent of fee income reverted to the park at all, and that fees then generated roughly a quarter of the park's budget. We print both versions of the post-1998 split because we cannot reconcile them, and we have found no comparable statement of the park's budget dependence since.

The after column is empty

The case for doubling rested on two projections. The technical report gave $39,600,000 for 2025, on an assumption of 300,000 tourists split 60 per cent foreign and 40 per cent national. The environment minister told the Assembly's Biodiversity Commission the figure was $40.9 million through 2025, and called questioning it outrageous. Both are official. They differ by $1.3 million and we name both.

The outturn has not been published. What has been published is the denominator. The park's annual visitor report for 2025 counts 290,404 tourists, up 4 per cent on 2024's 279,277, of whom 178,737 were foreign and 111,667 national or resident — 62/38, close to the projection's 60/40. Multiply the whole foreign count by $200 and the whole domestic count by $30 and you get $39,097,410. That is a ceiling, not a forecast: it charges every foreign visitor the adult rate and ignores children, students, CAN and Mercosur nationals, the over-65s and the exempt, each of whom pays less or nothing. The true figure must be materially below it. As of writing, no institution has published what the fee actually raised in 2025, and no institution has published the eleven-way breakdown for any year since 2019. We are not going to fill either gap with an estimate.

One more column belongs beside these, because it is the largest single sum of conservation money now moving in Galápagos and it has nothing to do with the gate. On 9 May 2023 Ecuador closed the Galápagos Marine Bond: $656 million raised, $1.628 billion of sovereign bonds bought back, more than $1.126 billion of lifetime debt-service savings, and roughly $12.05 million a year of new conservation funding plus about $5.41 million a year capitalising an endowment, for an estimated $323 million over 18.5 years through the Galápagos Life Fund. The scopes are not the same — the fund works on the marine reserve and the Hermandad reserve, the park's fee share pays for terrestrial and marine management both — but on our arithmetic the annual flow from a debt conversion now exceeds the park's 45 per cent of a record year at the gate. The IUCN's 2025 outlook assessment rates the site's overall condition of significant concern and its financial resources of some concern, noting operating budget reductions limiting staff capacity, while the World Heritage Committee has been asking Ecuador since 2023 for a zero-growth tourism model.

Why the Silence Index is 44

Four inputs, weighted 30/30/20/20. Physical remoteness scores 82: this is a thousand kilometres of open Pacific, reachable in practice only by air into Baltra or San Cristóbal. Access friction scores 28, and it is low for a reason that is the subject of this dossier — the barrier is a payment, not a permit. You buy a card, you pay a tax, you land. Visitor volume scores 6: 290,404 people in 2025, 79 per cent of them staying in towns rather than on boats, which is the pressure UNESCO keeps writing about. The fourth input we reason about is unresolved questions, at 48, because the money stops being traceable in 2019 and the statutory floor has never been argued in public. That produces 43.8. We round to 44. Galápagos is not a silent place; it is a well-signed one with an unread ledger.

What we would want, and did not find, is an audit. Ecuador's Comptroller General was named by the Biodiversity Commission in March 2024 as a recipient of its findings, along with the Constitutional Court and the Attorney General. We could not establish what any of them did next. Until one of them publishes, the honest description of the Galápagos entrance fee is the one the resolution gives and almost nobody repeats: a provincial arrival tax, collected by the environmental authority into the single treasury account, divided eleven ways, of which the national park takes the largest minority share and the visitor is told it is a park ticket.

Corner Codex — D-173

Place: Galápagos province, Ecuador — 19 islands about 1,000 km off the mainland
The fee: USD 200, foreign adult, since 1 August 2024. Was USD 100 from 18 March 1998
Instrument: Resolución No. 002-CGREG-24-02-2024, adopted 24 February 2024
Park's statutory share: 45%. The other 55% goes to ten other public bodies
Beneficiaries named in the resolution: Eleven, from the park down to five parish councils
Statutory floor: LOREG art. 29 — at least 50% to the national environmental authority
Last published receipts: 2019: park $8,079,363.90 of a $17,954,142 total
2024 collection: USD 22.1 million, on 279,277 visitors — about $79 a head
2025 visitors: 290,404, of whom 178,737 foreign — a DPNG figure, no revenue published
Separate charge: Transit Control Card, USD 20, kept whole by the Consejo de Gobierno
Projection for 2025: $39.6m (Consejo de Gobierno) or $40.9m (Environment Ministry)
World Heritage: Inscribed 1978; criteria vii, viii, ix, x; 14,066,514 ha
Silence Index: 44 / 100

The Traveler's Panel · checked 25 August 2026

Changing information. Prices, permits, seasons and road access change, sometimes at short notice. Everything here is a starting point for your own confirmation — not a quote, and not a guarantee. Verify with the operator and the relevant official body before you book.

Headline charge	USD 200, foreign adult, since 1 August 2024 (was USD 100 since 1998)
Second charge	Transit Control Card, USD 20, bought at mainland check-in
Who gets the 200	Park 45%, council 20%, three municipalities 25%, five parishes 5%, ABG 5%
Who gets the 20	The Consejo de Gobierno, whole. It is not in the split
Ecuadorian adult rate	USD 30. Over-65s, under-12s and CONADIS card holders USD 15
Legal instrument	Resolución No. 002-CGREG-24-02-2024, Art. 1 and Art. 2
Entry points	Baltra 207,392 and San Cristóbal 82,982 of 290,404 visitors in 2025
Stay limit	60 days a year for tourists, under LOREG art. 43

Getting there — Quito or Guayaquil → Seymour (Baltra) or San Cristóbal by air; fees paid at both ends

There is no way in but the two airports. Every visitor arrives at Seymour on Baltra, which took 207,392 of 2025's 290,404 arrivals, or at San Cristóbal, which took 82,982. Flights leave from Quito and Guayaquil and the fee machinery starts on the mainland, not in the islands.
The Transit Control Card is bought at check-in in Quito or Guayaquil, or pre-registered by an agency 48 hours ahead, and costs USD 20. It is a migration control document required by article 44 of the organic law, and without it you are not admitted to the province. Keep it: you present it again on departure.
The entrance tax is paid on arrival at the airport. The rate depends on which of the ten categories in article 1 of the resolution you fall into, so carry the document that proves it — a residence card, a student enrolment, a CONADIS card, a passport showing a CAN or Mercosur nationality. A foreign adult with none of these pays USD 200.
Budget USD 220 per foreign adult before a single night's accommodation or a single guided site. This is the part of Galápagos pricing that is fixed by resolution and cannot be shopped around. Everything else can.
Tourists may spend up to sixty days in the province in a year, counted from first entry, under article 43. That is a legal ceiling, not a booking convention, and it is not extendable.
Most national park visitor sites require a licensed naturalist guide, and boat itineraries are fixed in advance by the park. Independent wandering is not the model here; the towns are free to walk, the protected area largely is not.

Indicative costs — verify before booking

Entrance tax, foreign adult	USD 200 — of which the national park receives USD 90
Transit Control Card	USD 20 — of which the national park receives nothing
Entrance tax, Ecuadorian adult	USD 30; USD 15 if over 65, under 12, or a CONADIS holder
Entrance tax, CAN/Mercosur adult	USD 100; foreign students at Ecuadorian institutions USD 50
What we will not quote	Cruise, hotel and guide prices. Every figure we found came from a seller, and none from a published tariff
What is not published	What any of this raised in 2025, and what each institution received in any year since 2019

What to pack

Documentary proof of whichever fee category you belong to. The difference between the foreign adult rate and the resident rate is USD 170, and it is decided at a desk on the strength of paper.
Cash in dollars for both charges. Ecuador is dollarised and the desks are not places to discover that a card has been declined.
The transit card itself, kept for the return leg, and a photograph of it. It is a control document rather than a receipt.
Nothing organic, unprocessed or unlisted. Biosecurity inspection is the mandate of the agency that receives 5% of your entrance fee, and it is enforced at the mainland airport before you fly.
Realistic expectations about crowding. Seventy-nine per cent of visitors now stay in the towns rather than on boats, which is the specific change UNESCO has been writing to Ecuador about.

Where to stay

Almost everyone now stays ashore. The park's 2025 report puts 79 per cent of visitors in land-based accommodation against 21 per cent aboard boats, a reversal of the model the 1998 law was written around, and the reason the municipal share of the entrance tax has an infrastructure argument attached to it at all. Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz is the largest settlement in the province, with 12,696 people at the 2015 census, and carries most of the hotel stock; Puerto Baquerizo Moreno on San Cristóbal, the provincial capital, had 7,199; Puerto Villamil on Isabela, 2,200. Those three cantons receive 10.90, 8.50 and 5.60 per cent of every entrance fee paid, in that order, which is the closest thing to a published statement of their relative weight in the province. Floreana's single settlement, Puerto Velasco Ibarra, is a parish rather than a canton and receives 1 per cent, the same as Bellavista in the Santa Cruz highlands and El Progreso above Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. Where you sleep changes which municipal budget your bed night reaches; it does not change the split of the fee you paid at the airport, which is fixed by resolution before you choose.

Safety & responsible travel

Do not repeat the claim that the entrance fee funds the national park. It part-funds it. The resolution in force gives the park 45% and ten other public bodies the remaining 55%, and a minister told the National Assembly the park's share was 50%.
If you are asked to donate to a Galápagos conservation appeal on top of the fee, ask what the fee already bought. The honest answer is USD 90 of a USD 200 payment, and no published account of how any recipient spent it since 2019.
Take the biosecurity rules seriously rather than as a formality. Invasive species, not visitors, are the threat IUCN's 2025 assessment ranks first, at 1,575 introduced species of which 59 are rated highly invasive.
Consider whether your itinerary adds to the town-based pressure the World Heritage Committee has twice asked Ecuador to stabilise, and be aware that Ecuador has been asked to move to a zero-growth tourism model rather than a managed-growth one.
Do not treat the graduated tariff as a loophole. The resident, student and CAN/Mercosur rates exist because article 29 of the organic law requires nationality and residence to be considered, and misdeclaring is a matter for the migration desk, not a discount.

Nearby, and quieter

There is no 'nearby' in the usual sense: the nearest mainland is about a thousand kilometres east, and the province's own geography is measured in sea crossings. The property UNESCO inscribed in 1978 covers 14,066,514 hectares across nineteen islands and the surrounding marine reserve, which grew from 70,000 square kilometres in 1986 to 133,000 in 1998 and now sits beside the Reserva Marina Hermandad, 60,000 square kilometres of ocean running north-west toward the Costa Rican maritime border. That second reserve is the one the Galápagos Marine Bond pays for: $12.05 million a year of new conservation funding and about $5.41 million a year into an endowment, from a debt conversion that bought back $1.628 billion of Ecuadorian sovereign bonds in May 2023. It is worth knowing that the largest single flow of conservation money into these islands now arrives from New York and Washington rather than from the desk where you paid your $200, and that the visitor is told about neither.

Getting there, in order

1Quito or Guayaquil
↓
2Seymour (Baltra) or San Cristóbal by air; fees paid at both ends

Each leg is a separate booking and a separate chance to be weathered out. Build spare days into the chain, not onto the end of it.

Where it is

Galápagos province, Ecuador · 0.7400°S 90.3136°W · Open in Google Maps · OpenStreetMap

Key locations

Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz — largest settlement, 12,696 at the 2015 census; canton receives 10.90% of the fee
0.7400°S 90.3136°W
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristóbal — provincial capital, 7,290; canton receives 8.50% of the fee
0.9017°S 89.6102°W
Puerto Villamil, Isabela — main settlement of Isabela, 2,200; canton receives 5.60% of the fee
0.9553°S 90.9664°W
Seymour Airport, Baltra — entry point for 207,392 of the 290,404 visitors counted in 2025
0.4535°S 90.2662°W
Bellavista, Santa Cruz — highland parish; one of five parish councils receiving 1% each
0.6955°S 90.3255°W
El Progreso, San Cristóbal — parish above Puerto Baquerizo Moreno; receives 1% of the fee
0.9078°S 89.5569°W
Puerto Velasco Ibarra, Floreana — seat of the Santa María parish, the smallest inhabited island; receives 1%
1.2750°S 90.4861°W

Coordinates are for orientation and are accurate to roughly the width of the feature named, not to a doorway. Several of these points are inside protected areas or need a permit, a guide or a boat — read the access notes above before you plan a route to any of them.

Sources & further reading — checked 25 August 2026

Consejo de Gobierno del Régimen Especial de Galápagos — Resolución No. 002-CGREG-24-02-2024 (24 February 2024). The instrument in force. Article 1 sets the graduated tariff — $200 foreign adult, $100 foreign under-12, $100 CAN/Mercosur adult, $50 CAN/Mercosur under-12, $30 national or resident adult, $15 under-12, over-65, CONADIS holder and transeúnte, $50 foreign student. Article 2 names eleven beneficiaries: DPNG 45%, CGREG 20%, Santa Cruz 10.90%, San Cristóbal 8.50%, Isabela 5.60%, five parish GADs 1% each, ABG 5%. Article 3 sets entry into force at 1 August 2024. The sole derogatory provision repeals Resolución Nro. 029-CGREG-31-X-2016
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos — Informe técnico respecto a la distribución y actualización del tributo por ingreso a las áreas protegidas de Galápagos (18 December 2023). The technical case for doubling, by technical secretary Andrea Viviana Albán Ortega. Gives the distribution as 45% Parque Nacional Galápagos, 25% GAD´S Municipales, 20% Consejo de Gobierno, 5% Juntas Parroquiales, 5% Agencia de Bioseguridad; states that Resolución 029 of 2016 reformed ITEM 2 so that DPNG receives 45% and ABG 5%; totals of $17,832,121 for 2018 and $17,954,142 for 2019; the 2019 institutional table; a $19,041,000 figure for 2023 and a $39,600,000 projection for 2025 on 300,000 tourists; and quotes LOREG article 29's 50% clause without discussing it
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos — Informe jurídico No. 126-DAJ-2023 (20 December 2023). The council's legal opinion, by legal director Hernán Santos Torres, recommending the increase from July 2024, citing a 2020 CEA Consulting study putting a willingness-to-pay baseline at $233 and describing the 2015 distribution as having given the park 50%, later split into 45% park and 5% biosecurity agency. Notes fewer than 12,000 visitors at the 1978 World Heritage inscription against more than 270,000 in 2019
Ecuador — Ley Orgánica de Régimen Especial de la Provincia de Galápagos (Registro Oficial Supplement 520, 11 June 2015). Article 27 giving the plenary its taxing power over conservation charges; article 29 setting the five criteria for fixing the fee and requiring that at least 50% of what is collected be assigned to the national environmental authority through the deconcentrated unit in charge of Galápagos protected areas, that other beneficiaries spend on non-permanent items with at least half on conservation, and that parish GADs also benefit; article 31 requiring collection by the environmental authority and immediate deposit in the Cuenta Única del Tesoro Nacional; article 43 defining a tourist and the 60-day limit; article 44 requiring the transit control document
Ecuador — Ley Orgánica de Régimen Especial para la Provincia de Galápagos, Ley 67 (Registro Oficial 278, 18 March 1998). The superseded law. Article 17 sets the original tariff — US$100 foreign adult, $50 foreign under-12, $50 CAN/Mercosur adult, $25 CAN/Mercosur under-12, $6 national or resident adult, $3 under-12, $25 foreign student, under-twos exempt. Article 18 divides the proceeds seven ways: Parque Nacional Galápagos 40%, municipalities 25%, provincial council 10%, marine reserve 5%, INGALA 10%, inspection and quarantine 5%, National Navy 5%
Ecuador — Reglamento General de aplicación de la LOREG, Decreto Ejecutivo 1363 (21 April 2017). Article 82 providing that the Agencia de Regulación y Control de la Bioseguridad y Cuarentena para Galápagos shall be financed by the national environmental authority in at least 5% of the total the latter collects from the protected-areas entrance fee; and article 29 delegating the cost, requirements and procedure of the transit control card to a plenary ordinance
Ecuador — Decreto Ejecutivo 1319 creating the Agencia de Regulación y Control de la Bioseguridad y Cuarentena para Galápagos (5 October 2012). Article 1 creating the ABG as a technical public-law entity attached to the Ministry of the Environment, signed by President Rafael Correa with the ministers of heritage, environment and agriculture. Contains no financing article and no reference to a share of the entrance tax
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos — Entrance fee to the Galápagos National Park (tariff page citing Resolución 002-CGREG-24-02-2024, Art. 1). The council's public statement of the tariff in English: $200 and $100 for international visitors by age, $100 and $50 for CAN and Mercosur, $30, $15 and $50 for domestic categories and foreign students, under-twos exempt; and the claim that the fees finance conservation of the protected area under the park directorate and sustainable development of the four populated islands, with no percentages given
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos — Tasa de ingreso al Parque Nacional Galápagos (Spanish tariff page). The same schedule in Spanish, attributed to Resolución No. 002-CGREG-24-02-2024, Art. 1, including the transeúnte rate at 50% of the national rate and the CONADIS disability rate at $15. Describes the destination of the money in narrative terms only — park management plus municipal basic services, education, sport, health, sanitation and tourism infrastructure
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos — Se actualiza la tasa de ingreso a las áreas protegidas en Galápagos (24 February 2024). The announcement of the vote: $30 for nationals and $200 for foreigners, carried by five votes to four in the plenary, the first adjustment in 26 years, to take effect six months later; and the three stated justifications — UNESCO's call to stabilise tourism growth, a conservation-aligned tourism model, and strengthening local government capacity in water, sanitation and waste
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos — Presidente del Consejo de Gobierno presenta ante la Asamblea Nacional la importancia de la actualización de la tasa de ingreso. Minister Altamirano's evidence that the council had complied with the final paragraph of LOREG article 29, that 329,000 visitors arrived in 2023, that 70% stay in populated centres, that the tax had been unchanged for 26 years, that a projection of more than a million tourists a year by 2042 follows current trends, and that eleven institutions receive the money
Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos — Preguntas y respuestas frecuentes: control migratorio (TCT). The Transit Control Card costs USD 20 per trip for tourists, is issued by the Consejo de Gobierno and paid at check-in in Quito or Guayaquil or pre-registered by agencies 48 hours ahead; tourists may stay 60 days a year and transeúntes 90, extendable once. The page states no distribution of card revenue and cites no resolution number
Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos — 279.277 visitantes llegaron a las Islas Galápagos durante 2024 (11 February 2025). The park's own figures: 279,277 visitors in 2024 against 329,475 in 2023 and 267,688 in 2022; 154,489 foreign and 124,788 national; 78% land-based against 22% on boats; and revenue of USD 22.1 million in 2024, USD 17.9 million in 2023 and USD 14.6 million in 2022, with the statement that the money is distributed between CGREG, DPNG, ABG and the decentralised autonomous governments
Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos — Ingreso de visitantes a las áreas protegidas de Galápagos: Informe anual 2025. 290,404 tourists in 2025, up 4% or 11,127 on 2024; 178,737 foreign (62%, up 16%) against 111,667 national or resident (38%, down 11%); 207,392 arriving through Baltra and 82,982 through San Cristóbal; 79% land-based against 21% on board; and the United States first among source markets at about 112,000. Carries no revenue figures
Dirección del Parque Nacional Galápagos — Tributo de ingreso. The park's own page on the entrance tax, giving the current schedule as at 30 June 2025 — $200 and $100 foreign, $100 and $50 CAN/Mercosur, $30, $15 and $50 domestic and student — describing the money as destined to finance biodiversity conservation and community infrastructure, and publishing no percentage distribution and no share attributable to the park itself
Asamblea Nacional del Ecuador — Comisión de Biodiversidad inicia fiscalización del incremento de la tasa de ingreso a las áreas protegidas de Galápagos (20 March 2024). The parliamentary scrutiny record. Environment minister Sade Fritschi describes the distribution as 50% to the national park and 50% to the province's autonomous governments and calls it outrageous to question a projected collection of USD 40.9 million through 2025; tourism minister Niels Olsen dates the unchanged tariff to 1998; the three mayors support the rise; and the commission agrees to report its findings to the Comptroller, the Constitutional Court and the Attorney General
El Universo — Más de $22 millones se recaudaron en Galápagos por tasa de ingreso a áreas protegidas (11 February 2025). Cited only for the on-the-record remark it carries: park director Arturo Izurieta on balancing the visitor experience against conservation of the ecosystem, alongside the same $22.1 million 2024 figure and the $4.2 million and $7.5 million increases on 2023 and 2022 that the park published itself
UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Galápagos Islands (property 1). Inscribed 1978 under criteria vii, viii, ix and x; property area 14,066,514 hectares; marine reserve of 133,000 km² extended from 70,000 km² in 1986; on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 2007 to 2010; increased tourism named among the main threats; and the note that the 1998 Special Regime Law introduced a visitor management system with permits and quotas
UNESCO World Heritage Committee — Decision 45 COM 7B.67, Galápagos Islands (Ecuador), extended 45th session, 2023. The Committee reiterates continued concern at the steady growth of tourism and commercial flights to the property, calls on Ecuador to develop and implement a clear tourism strategy with urgent measures to achieve the zero-growth model, requires the moratorium on new tourism facilities and the limits on flight numbers to be maintained, and sets a reporting deadline of 1 December 2024 for the 47th session
UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Galápagos Islands: documents, decisions and state of conservation reports. The document index for the property, listing state of conservation reports filed by Ecuador in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2024 and Committee decisions including 45 COM 7B.67 of 2023, 47 COM 7B.36 of 2025 and the minor boundary modification 47 COM 8B.36 of 2025
IUCN World Heritage Outlook — Galápagos Islands conservation outlook assessment (2025). Overall conservation outlook of significant concern; 1,575 introduced species of which 59 highly invasive; plastic pollution affecting 52 species; visitation peaking at 329,475 in 2023 and falling 18% to 279,277 in 2024, still 36% above 2017; 79% of tourists staying in urban areas; protection and management rated mostly effective but tourism management without concrete strategies; and finances rated some concern, citing the $1.1 billion debt conversion generating about $13 million a year through the Galápagos Life Fund against operating budget reductions
US International Development Finance Corporation — Financial close reached in largest debt conversion for marine conservation to protect the Galápagos (9 May 2023). The $656 million Galápagos Marine Bond; $1.628 billion of Ecuadorian international bonds bought back; more than $1.126 billion of lifetime debt-service savings; about $12.05 million a year of new conservation funding plus about $5.41 million a year capitalising the Galápagos Life Fund endowment; an estimated $323 million over 18.5 years and an endowment projected above $227 million by 2041; DFC political risk insurance of $656 million and an IDB guarantee of $85 million
Inter-American Development Bank — Ecuador completes world's largest debt-for-nature conversion with IDB and DFC support. The IDB's $85 million guarantee alongside DFC's $656 million of political risk insurance; more than $1.126 billion in lifetime savings of which $323 million is directed to conservation over 18.5 years through the Galápagos Life Fund; and the fund's scope covering both the Galápagos Marine Reserve and the 60,000 km² Reserva Marina Hermandad
The Nature Conservancy — Benitez P., S., 'Visitor use fees and concession systems in protected areas: Galápagos National Park case study', Ecotourism Program Technical Report Series No. 3 (April 2001). The pre-1998 history: nationals paying $0.55 before 1993 and $3.00 plus a $2.50 municipal tax from 1993, foreigners $40 before 1993 and $80–$110 with municipal tax from 1993; collections of $3,296,678 in 1995 rising to $5,098,455 in 1999; the statement that only about 30% of fee income reverted to the park before 1998 and that fees then generated about 25% of its budget; and a post-1998 distribution diagram giving municipalities 20% and the Ministry of Environment 5%, which does not match article 18 of the law
Wolfs Company and Institute for Environmental Studies, VU Amsterdam — Schep, Reusen, Luján Gallegos, van Beukering and Botzen, 'Does tourism growth in the Galápagos Islands contribute to sustainable economic development?' (hosted by the Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos). A valuation study on the council's own server finding that visitors are willing to pay more than USD 17 million for nature conservation over and above the fees they currently pay to enter the national park, and noting that non-national visitors pay a considerably higher entrance fee than Ecuadorians without stating the amounts
Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (Ecuador) — Galápagos tiene 25.244 habitantes según censo 2015 (10 November 2016). The 2015 island census: 25,244 residents, 12,926 men and 12,318 women, against 23,046 in 2010; Santa Cruz 15,701, San Cristóbal 7,199, Isabela 2,344; 8,360 households at an average 3.0 members; annual growth falling from 3.1% to 1.8%; and service coverage of 89.9% public water, 99.7% electricity, 99.1% sewerage or septic and 98.1% refuse collection
US Bureau of Labor Statistics — CPI inflation calculator (methodology page). Confirms that the calculator and the underlying series are the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, US city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted — the series used for the real-terms comparison of the 1998 and 2024 tariffs in this dossier
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis — Consumer Price Index, 1913 to the present. The annual CPI-U index table used for our arithmetic: 163.0 for 1998, 313.7 for 2024 and 321.9 for 2025, on the 1982–84 = 100 base, sourced to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' all-urban-consumers series
GeoNames — Puerto Ayora, Galápagos, Ecuador. Gazetteer entry for the province's largest settlement at 0°44'24"S, 90°18'49"W, classed as a populated place with a population of 12,696; the same result set carries the Charles Darwin Research Station at 0°44'31"S, 90°18'14"W
GeoNames — Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristóbal, Galápagos. Gazetteer entry for the provincial capital at 0°54'06"S, 89°36'36"W, classed as the seat of a first-order administrative division, population 7,290, in cantón San Cristóbal
GeoNames — Puerto Villamil, Isabela, Galápagos. Gazetteer entry for the main settlement of Isabela at 0°57'19"S, 90°57'59"W, classed as a populated place with a population of 2,200
GeoNames — Bellavista, Santa Cruz, Galápagos. Gazetteer entry for the highland parish of Bellavista at 0°41'43"S, 90°19'31"W, one of the five rural parish councils that each receive 1% of the entrance tax
GeoNames — El Progreso, San Cristóbal, Galápagos. Gazetteer entry for El Progreso at 0°54'28"S, 89°33'25"W in cantón San Cristóbal, another of the five parish beneficiaries named in Article 2 of the 2024 resolution
GeoNames — Puerto Velasco Ibarra, Floreana (Santa María), Galápagos. Gazetteer entry for the only settlement on Floreana at 1°16'30"S, 90°29'10"W, the seat of the Santa María parish council, which receives the same 1% as the others
GeoNames — Seymour Airport, Baltra, Galápagos. Gazetteer entry for Seymour Airport at 0.4535°S, 90.2662°W, serving Baltra island — the entry point for 207,392 of the 290,404 visitors counted in 2025

Official and scientific bodies are the authority for safety, regulatory and scientific claims. Commercial operators are used only for practical detail such as tour length, meeting points and indicative pricing — never for a safety or scientific statement.

How this was made

Desk research. Compiled from official bodies, scientific and conservation sources, established journalism and licensed operators. Not based on a personal visit.

Editor’s method note — what we checked, corrected and could not verify

Desk research only. Nobody from this publication has been to Galápagos, and nothing here rests on observation of the islands.
Every URL cited was opened and read before citation. Sources we could not open are listed at the end of this note and are cited nowhere in the piece.
The distribution was checked against the operative instrument, not only against the technical report that describes it. Article 2 of Resolución 002-CGREG-24-02-2024 itself names eleven beneficiaries and their percentages, so the 45% is current law and not a 2015 figure carried forward in a summary. The same resolution's sole derogatory provision repeals Resolución 029-CGREG-31-X-2016.
We could not open Resolución 027-CGREG-03-IX-2015 or Resolución 029-CGREG-31-X-2016 in their original texts; searches returned only documents that describe them. Our account of what they originally provided rests on two secondary descriptions inside the government's own file — the technical report and legal opinion 126-DAJ-2023 — and we attribute it to them in the body rather than stating it as the resolutions' own words.
On the statutory floor we print both readings and pick neither. LOREG article 29 assigns at least 50% to the national environmental authority through the deconcentrated unit in charge of Galápagos protected areas; the resolution assigns the park directorate 45%. Article 82 of the 2017 regulation provides for the biosecurity agency to be funded by that authority at at least 5% of collections, and Decreto Ejecutivo 1319 attaches the agency to the Ministry of the Environment, which supports a reading in which 45 plus 5 satisfies the floor. No document we opened argues either case.
The 2019 institutional figures are the report's own. We verified that they sum: $8,079,363.90 plus $4,488,535 plus $3,590,828.40 plus $897,707.10 plus $897,707.10 reaches the stated total of $17,954,142. The municipal line is given in the report as three canton figures, which is why we print it to the dollar rather than to the cent.
All per-visitor and per-payment breakdowns in the body — the $220 divided across five recipients, the $79.13 average, the 2024 shares of $22.1 million, the transit card ceiling and the $263 per resident — are our own arithmetic applied to published rates, published percentages and published totals, and are labelled as arithmetic in the sentences that carry them. None of them is a published government figure.
The real-terms comparison uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U annual index as tabulated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis: 163.0 for 1998 and 313.7 for 2024. Ecuador has used the US dollar since 2000 but not before, so the 1998 tariff — which the 1998 law itself expresses as an equivalent in sucres of a dollar figure — is being deflated by a US index. That is the appropriate series for a dollar-denominated charge and it is not a measure of Ecuadorian prices.
We do not state a 2025 collection figure. The two official projections, $39.6 million from the council and $40.9 million from the environment ministry, are both printed and both named. The $39,097,410 ceiling derived from the 2025 visitor counts is explicitly an upper bound and is not offered as a forecast.
Coordinates come from the GeoNames gazetteer, one entry per point, and each entry was opened. We found no gazetteer entry for Santo Tomás, the seat of the Tomás de Berlanga parish on Isabela, so that parish is not pinned even though it is a named beneficiary.
Sources we could not read, and therefore did not cite: the UNESCO state of conservation record for Galápagos at whc.unesco.org/en/soc/4652, which returned 403 on both forms of the URL; the 2022 census fact sheet for Galápagos at censoecuador.gob.ec, blocked by a robots fetch failure arising from a certificate error, which is why we use the 2015 island census for population; the Ministry of Tourism's copy of the LOREG, blocked by a hostname mismatch on its certificate, which is why the law is cited from galapagos.gob.ec; the biosecurity agency's own institutional pages, which timed out and returned 404; and the IUCN outlook PDF, disallowed by robots, which is why we cite the site's HTML assessment page instead.
Things we could not verify: what the entrance tax actually raised in 2024–25 as an audited figure, only a park press release being available; the institutional breakdown for any year after 2019, none having been published; what the Transit Control Card raises in a year, or where that money goes, no distribution being stated anywhere we looked; whether the Comptroller General, the Constitutional Court or the Attorney General acted on the Biodiversity Commission's March 2024 referral; whether any recipient complies with article 29's requirement that at least half its share go to conservation, protection, environmental sanitation or biosecurity and none of it to permanent expenditure; the national park's own annual budget and what proportion of it the fee now supplies, the only figure we found being a 25% estimate from 2001; why a park tariff sheet published on galapagos.gob.ec under a 2025 filename still shows pre-2024 amounts, which we could not resolve and therefore do not cite; and whether the 2015 resolution's original text matches the two government descriptions of it that we relied on.

AI is used to draft this text, and a human checks it. Every figure, date and quotation above was verified by Tony Hall against the source cited for it in the reference list; where sources disagree, the disagreement is shown rather than resolved, and where a claim could not be confirmed it is either marked unverified or left out. The illustrations are AI-created and labelled as such — no photograph on this site is presented as a record of a real place. Full disclosure · Editorial policy.

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Divided Eleven Ways: The Galápagos $200 Is Not Park Income