Española Island
WOW! Today was a BIG day for conservation in the Galapagos Islands. Today we saw something I have never seen before, and I have spent 25 years, exactly half of my life, working as a Naturalist and treading the trails of these islands. To our delight, we saw an animal that has not been seen along the National Park’s marked path on Punta Suarez before. We found an adult male Española tortoise in the wild!
This morning, Polaris Naturalist Antonio Gallardo, who is himself “endemic” to Galapagos (i.e. he was born in the town of Puerto Ayora), heard something crashing through the dry shrubs just off the trail. He couldn’t imagine what was making such a racket (not an iguana, or a booby, or an albatross or even a sea lion—and these are the species that he considered were possible). Antonio slipped off the trail through the vegetation to investigate. As licensed park wardens, Naturalists have authority to leave the trail in special circumstances. There was a tortoise! Amazing! So let me explain just how amazing this sighting really was…
In the mid-60’s when the Charles Darwin Research Station scientists meticulously searched Española Island, they located only 14 adult tortoises (2 males and 12 females). Because these widely spread out animals were not finding each other in order to breed, there were no eggs being laid, no baby tortoises being hatched and no recruitment into the wild tortoise population on this island. The scientists decided to initiate a captive breeding program and removed all the adults tortoises from Española to the Station. They advertised worldwide and found another male tortoise at the San Diego Zoo; he was returned and has been an important part of the breeding project.
Since the mid 70’s, young tortoises raised at the Station have been repatriated to Española Island. Milton (he was number 1000, or “mil” in Spanish) was released there is 2000. And almost every time we Naturalists relate the success story of bringing the Española tortoises back from the very brink of extinction, we make this comment: “sometime very soon we will be seeing tortoises along the trail at Punta Suarez”.
Yep, today was that BIG day! The male tortoise pictured here must be some 30 years old and is probably one of the first individuals to reach maturity on this island. It will take many years to return to a stable population size. I have heard estimates of needing 10,000 - 15,000 individuals to achieve this state. It’s a slow process, everything about these lumbering giant tortoises is rather slow. Today we had reason to celebrate the success of the survival of the Española tortoises!
Additional Information: December 4, 2003
I stopped by Charles Darwin Research Station and turned in a report (with a map drawn by Carlos Romero and photos taken by our guests). Yep, we are the first group EVER to find a tortoise along the trail at Punta Suarez! Everyone was delighted. The tortoise was an adult male and by looking at the marks on his shell, which we photographed, he seems to be either number 23 or number 33. If this is so, then he was born in the first batch of eggs to hatch at the Station in 1970 or 1971 and was among the first 17 repatriated to the island in 1975. They released 17 animals in '75 with numbers starting at #20.
WOW! Today was a BIG day for conservation in the Galapagos Islands. Today we saw something I have never seen before, and I have spent 25 years, exactly half of my life, working as a Naturalist and treading the trails of these islands. To our delight, we saw an animal that has not been seen along the National Park’s marked path on Punta Suarez before. We found an adult male Española tortoise in the wild!
This morning, Polaris Naturalist Antonio Gallardo, who is himself “endemic” to Galapagos (i.e. he was born in the town of Puerto Ayora), heard something crashing through the dry shrubs just off the trail. He couldn’t imagine what was making such a racket (not an iguana, or a booby, or an albatross or even a sea lion—and these are the species that he considered were possible). Antonio slipped off the trail through the vegetation to investigate. As licensed park wardens, Naturalists have authority to leave the trail in special circumstances. There was a tortoise! Amazing! So let me explain just how amazing this sighting really was…
In the mid-60’s when the Charles Darwin Research Station scientists meticulously searched Española Island, they located only 14 adult tortoises (2 males and 12 females). Because these widely spread out animals were not finding each other in order to breed, there were no eggs being laid, no baby tortoises being hatched and no recruitment into the wild tortoise population on this island. The scientists decided to initiate a captive breeding program and removed all the adults tortoises from Española to the Station. They advertised worldwide and found another male tortoise at the San Diego Zoo; he was returned and has been an important part of the breeding project.
Since the mid 70’s, young tortoises raised at the Station have been repatriated to Española Island. Milton (he was number 1000, or “mil” in Spanish) was released there is 2000. And almost every time we Naturalists relate the success story of bringing the Española tortoises back from the very brink of extinction, we make this comment: “sometime very soon we will be seeing tortoises along the trail at Punta Suarez”.
Yep, today was that BIG day! The male tortoise pictured here must be some 30 years old and is probably one of the first individuals to reach maturity on this island. It will take many years to return to a stable population size. I have heard estimates of needing 10,000 - 15,000 individuals to achieve this state. It’s a slow process, everything about these lumbering giant tortoises is rather slow. Today we had reason to celebrate the success of the survival of the Española tortoises!
Additional Information: December 4, 2003
I stopped by Charles Darwin Research Station and turned in a report (with a map drawn by Carlos Romero and photos taken by our guests). Yep, we are the first group EVER to find a tortoise along the trail at Punta Suarez! Everyone was delighted. The tortoise was an adult male and by looking at the marks on his shell, which we photographed, he seems to be either number 23 or number 33. If this is so, then he was born in the first batch of eggs to hatch at the Station in 1970 or 1971 and was among the first 17 repatriated to the island in 1975. They released 17 animals in '75 with numbers starting at #20.
