He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
More than a century after its extinction was made official, a giant tortoise endemic to the Fernandina Island has been found in the wonderful Galapagos Archipelago.
Inserted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the list of extinct animals in 1906, it is an adult female belonging to the Chelonoidis Phantasticus species, identified by an expedition of experts from the Galapagos National Park and the US NGO Galapagos Conservancy is currently being transported to a breeding center on nearby Santa Cruz Island.
Experts believe that it is not the only one, because the traces and the smell of other turtles probably of the same species would be evident.
The Fernandina Giant Tortoise is one of 14 species of giant tortoises native to the Galapagos Islands, and many of them are in danger of extinction. Turtles have been killed in the past two centuries but this discovery is a good reason to hope for a better future.
“This encourages us to strengthen our research plans to find others (turtles), which will allow us to start a captive breeding program to recover this species,” says Danny Rueda, director of the Galapagos National Park.
BREAKING NEWS! GC’s own @wacho_tapia just returned from Fernandina Island in #Galapagos, where they discovered a female #tortoise. Tortoises on Fernandina have been thought to be extinct for over 100 years, so this is a monumental finding! Photos © GNPD, W. Tapia pic.twitter.com/fhQpIzsHmM
- GalapagosConservancy (@SaveGalapagos) February 20, 2019
The Galapagos archipelago comprises 19 islands in the Pacific Ocean about 1.000 km off the Ecuadorian coast. Fernandina, the third largest and youngest of the islands, remains the most volcanically active. The Galapagos were declared a national park in 1959 and a Unesco world heritage site in 1978 and today there are eleven species of giant tortoises here: five in Isabela, one in San Cristobal, two in Santa Cruz, one in Espanola, one in Pinzon and one in Santiago.
We hope that this magnificent place will repopulate these centenarian inhabitants!
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Germana Carillo
