A US military base will not be built on the Galapagos islands famous for their unique flora and fauna, Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa said Friday.

US ally Noboa had caused an outcry by earlier saying a base could be erected on Baltra, a small island in the Pacific archipelago chain, to combat drug and fuel trafficking and illegal fishing.

The Galapagos, where British naturalist Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution, hosts plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world.

On Friday Noboa said: "Baltra is ruled out," in a decision taken with US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Alternative sites were identified at be Manta or Salinas -- coastal cities on the mainland where "there is a higher priority in terms of arms trafficking, fuel trafficking, and drug tra

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