Global News - February 2008

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Rare Galapagos tortoises set for relocation

Wed 20 February 2008 13:00 UK — South America,Reptiles

Experts and conservationists on the Galapagos Islands will make a pioneering effort to boost the populations of some of the archipelago's rarest tortoises.

While there are more than ten types of tortoise spread across the islands, their populations have not been integrated, with scientists choosing to keep them separate, the Independent reported.

However, now efforts are underway to take tortoises from the island of Espanola and put them on nearby Pinta, in an attempt to boost its own population of the reptile, which currently numbers one - a male known as Lonesome George.

"Many people like the idea of a pure Galapagos, the idea of finding a mate for Lonesome George and repopulating Pinta with pure-bred tortoises," Bryan Milstead, of the Charles Darwin Research Station, told the newspaper.

"But right now there's also a need to manage the ecosystem properly. It's a tortoise-dominated, tortoise-evolved landscape. Pinta needs a dominant herbivore - now."

Populations of tortoises on the Galapagos Islands were dramatically reduced by pirates and whalers in the 18th and 19th century who killed them for food, while the islands' ecosystems were badly hit by the introduction of invasive species, such as goats, in the 20th century.

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