India, Nov. 13 -- With the removal of the feral goats on Santiago Island in the Galapagos, there were opportunities for native vegetation to grow once again after years of grazing. According to the Galapagos Conservancy's account of Project Isabela, the project started in 1997 as an effort to remove mammals from some of the Galapagos islands and recorded the eradication of the last feral goat from Santiago in 2005. In 2006, Santiago Island was declared free of goats, pigs, and donkeys.

The 2011 study published in the journal PLOS ONE detailed the scale and cost of the operation. Researchers reported that 79,579 goats were removed from Santiago Island over 4.5 years, at a cost of $6.1 million. The rapid recovery of the endemic daisy tree,...