Santa Cruz Island
Giant Land Tortoise Day. Finally we are here at Santa Cruz Island, learning about the huge effort that the Galápagos National Park service and the CDF have been making for more than 45 years to restore the dynasty of these unique giant reptiles. Once killed, eaten and taken out of the islands almost to the brink of extinction by pirates, buccaneers and even early settlers, giant tortoises were fortunate that conservation officers arrived just in time to save their unique species.
The rearing centre that we visited this morning started working in 1963. Fausto LLerena, the very first Park Ranger of the GNPS, started taking care of the baby land tortoises under the advice of the guest scientists of the CDF. Now Fausto is in his early seventies and the centre has been named after him. We have achieved great milestones in the most successful breeding centre for wild animals in the world; we have repatriated more than 5,000 land tortoises to their island of origin. Nowadays, the GNPS has two more, very modern facilities to grow tortoises in captive and semi-captive conditions also on the islands of Isabela and San Cristobal.
One of the highlights of the day was, of course, the lava tube we saw while visiting the highlands of Santa Cruz, where we also ate a typical lunch at the farm.
The afternoon excursion took us to a green forest where the predominant tree was the Galápagos daisy. Bird watchers had a blast with the many species of finches that can be observed in the humid zone of this island.
Once back on board and before dinner, we enjoyed a couple of very interesting presentations about the islands by our naturalists as we do every night and, with our Expedition Leader’s counsel, we started to dream about the wonders that are expecting us tomorrow.
Giant Land Tortoise Day. Finally we are here at Santa Cruz Island, learning about the huge effort that the Galápagos National Park service and the CDF have been making for more than 45 years to restore the dynasty of these unique giant reptiles. Once killed, eaten and taken out of the islands almost to the brink of extinction by pirates, buccaneers and even early settlers, giant tortoises were fortunate that conservation officers arrived just in time to save their unique species.
The rearing centre that we visited this morning started working in 1963. Fausto LLerena, the very first Park Ranger of the GNPS, started taking care of the baby land tortoises under the advice of the guest scientists of the CDF. Now Fausto is in his early seventies and the centre has been named after him. We have achieved great milestones in the most successful breeding centre for wild animals in the world; we have repatriated more than 5,000 land tortoises to their island of origin. Nowadays, the GNPS has two more, very modern facilities to grow tortoises in captive and semi-captive conditions also on the islands of Isabela and San Cristobal.
One of the highlights of the day was, of course, the lava tube we saw while visiting the highlands of Santa Cruz, where we also ate a typical lunch at the farm.
The afternoon excursion took us to a green forest where the predominant tree was the Galápagos daisy. Bird watchers had a blast with the many species of finches that can be observed in the humid zone of this island.
Once back on board and before dinner, we enjoyed a couple of very interesting presentations about the islands by our naturalists as we do every night and, with our Expedition Leader’s counsel, we started to dream about the wonders that are expecting us tomorrow.
