![]() ![]() In late June, the organization’s World Heritage Committee added the caveat “in danger” to the designation to draw attention to mounting threats, including a surge in tourism and rising immigration from Ecuador’s mainland. ![]() The archipelago is so revered for its unique marine and terrestrial life that it was the first World Heritage Site chosen by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “If you look at tortoises today compared to 50 years ago, they are so far ahead of where they used to be,” says Linda Cayot, Lonesome George’s former keeper and a scientific adviser to the Falls Church, Va.–based Galápagos Conservancy.īut tortoise conservation may be a rare bright spot in the struggle to protect the fragile Galápagos ecosystem. Nearly everyone agrees that their prospects are improving, however. Revival signsĮstimates of how many giant tortoises remain in the Galápagos vary widely, from less than 10,000 to more than 30,000. The revelation is just one illustration of how genetics and conservation biology are intermingling to rewrite an oversize reptile’s evolutionary past and to reshape plans to safeguard the remaining tortoise species well into the future. Last April, however, the surprise discovery that Lonesome George has a genetic cousin on another island cast doubt, in a hopeful way, on George’s one-of-a-kind status. He is quite likely the world’s last pure-bred Pinta tortoise, one of the dozen or so closely related species that still lumber around the Galápagos, an archipelago of 19 islands and dozens of islets about 600 miles west of mainland Ecuador. Now in his 60s, 70s, or beyond-no one really knows-George may have lived more than half his life in exile. The confirmed bachelor has been a potent icon of conservation ever since he was spotted on remote Pinta Island in 1971 and captured the next year by a group of goat hunters. A Galápagos tortoise with a distinctive saddle-backed carapace poses at the Charles Darwin Research Statio. ![]() A Galápagos tortoise shares a morning swim with a white-cheeked pintail in a duckweed-covered pool in the Santa Cruz highlands. These hatchlings, bred in captivity, will be released into the wild at 5 years of age. Tortoise hatchlings only a few years old beat the heat at the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galápagos Islands. Geneticists and conservation biologists are unraveling the complex history of the numerous species of Galápagos tortoises in order to safeguard their future. This giant tortoise surveys the scene at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the Galápagos Islands. Within the station, another walkway leads to a natural enclosure sheltering a misanthropic Galápagos tortoise named Lonesome George. A path takes them past marine iguanas sneezing brine from their salt-caked nostrils and striated herons roosting in the red mangroves to the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. Not far from where the Galápagos Islands’ most famous loner spends his days, tourists disembark by the inflatable boatload at a modern dock. ![]()
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