Educational Media Reviews Online

“Paradise belongs mostly to our imagination” says the documentary narrator, Jon Bowermaster, as he sets out to prove this statement. The film provides a balance of breathtaking scenery and disturbing footage of seals sunning on graffiti-covered rocks or Darwin’s finches dead alongside a busy highway. The documentary is good at explaining the complexities of managing the Galapagos Islands. Viewers are introduced to numerous viewpoints and issues through interviews with marine biologists, local businessmen, park rangers, government officials, farmers, and World Wildlife fund representatives. In the end, you discover tourism, poverty, and politics each play a role in the Galapagos Islands.

Instructors could use this film as a case study for international environmental policy. During filming in 2007, Ecuador and UNESCO declared the Galapagos Islands as a World Heritage Site in Danger. In 2010, the site was removed from the danger list. Although the film was completed before UNESCO’s 2010 decision, viewers can continue to follow this issue. A United Nations news video, Galapagos Evolving, also filmed in 2007 makes a nice compliment to this film.

What Would Darwin Think does have a pro-environmental bias. Despite the bias, I recommend the film for academic use because of the variety of interviewees, brevity of the film, the low educational price, and the ability for students to track the issues into present-day. Supplemental teaching materials are not included. The director, Jon Bowermaster, does maintain a blog, “Notes from Sea Level,” about his perspectives and experiences related to his work. The film is appropriate for high school and college classes.