On page four today the New York Times carries an 887-word piece from the Canary Islands — Spanish territory off the coast of southern Morocco home to unusual evolutionary habitats “that fascinated Charles Darwin more than 100 years ago, and that today reveal a new species or subspecies to scientists an average of once every six days.”
While the piece focuses on the local flaura and fauna, and the influx of “invasive species” that are threatening the natural habitat, down in the sixth paragraph the paper explains that the ecological problems the islands are currently suffering from parallel another form of stress: “waves of West African immigrants seeking to reach mainland Europe through the porous borders separating the islands from the rest of the European Union.”
Ah, yes, that other immigration crisis — the one concerning thousands of African migrants perilously traveling hundreds of miles in overcrowded boats — matters too. (“The flood of destitute Africans making the dangerous journey to the Canary Islands to gain a foothold in Europe is so intense that more have been caught in August than in all of 2005,” the Associated Press reports today.)
But you wouldn’t know that particular fact from looking at the Times, which — having dispensed with the human crisis in less than a sentence — returned to explore the dangers the islands’ plants and animals face. Meantime, the paper has mentioned the Canary Islands three other times in the past month: on Aug. 1 an Editorial Observer piece included one sentence on Africans crossing to the islands, while on Aug. 10 House & Home profiled a woman who once lived “with a monkey in a Canary Islands cave.” The Arts, Briefly column of Aug. 19 also covered the islands, writing about the repatriation of a centuries-old mummy from a Spanish museum.
The threats to the Canaries’ rich biodiversity may be serious, but we wonder if the story of poor West Africans journeying from Mauritania and Senegal “in rickety, open fishing boats” in search of a better existence doesn’t deserve more attention.
“More than 18,000 West African migrants have reached the beaches of the Spanish Canary Islands since the start of the year, almost four times the figure for the whole of 2005,” reports Reuters, adding that many die “by drowning or from hunger, thirst and exhaustion on the perilous sea journey.” (“More than 1,000 are reported to have died attempting the voyage since late last year,” the AP said last week.)
The British papers and the wire services have given the story substantial coverage, but here it has flown under the national radar. Over the last month the Los Angeles Times has not mentioned the crisis in the Canaries, while the Washington Post has noted it twice in its world briefing, for a total of five sentences of coverage.
That’s too bad, because it seems there would be countless dramatic and worthwhile Canary Islands stories for the taking, if the Big Three looked for them. In their absence, we turn to London’s Daily Telegraph, which captured one such story from Tenerife earlier this month, as a vacation sunset was interrupted by the arrival of another boat — “a large canoe-shaped fishing vessel” which “ran aground, tipping its cargo of African migrants into the surf,” leaving many tourists to watch in disbelief while “others ran into the sea and hauled out Africans who were too weak to wade to safety.”
Now that’s an immigration story worth following.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.