The Galápagos Islands are a story of humans desperately trying to undo their own impact, and actually having good impetus for doing so. It highlights both the capacity for people to really work towards creating sustainable ecosystems and the underlying contradictions that underly those attempts.
I was awed by this place when I visited last year. It has some incredible ecosystems, and is probably the best example of a modern human society attempting to co-exist with a previously existing ecosystem. Which is simultaneously inspiring and depressing: inspiring that it’s working so well; depressing that it might not be enough.
The outcome of this attempt, especially as the climate changes, is a great yardstick for how we approach our impacts on and conservation of native ecosystems everywhere.