Santa Cruz Island
What a wonderful day watching tortoises of all ages and stages. In the morning the “little giant” tortoises at the Charles Darwin Research Station (one of the captive breeding and repatriation programs) gave us an example on how conservation programs can be really successful. Back in the late 1960’s, 14 tortoises were found on Española Island. Today, there are more than 1000 tortoises “running” all over the island and reproducing!
As we were brought back to civilization for a day, we helped the local economy and shopped in town for a little while. Along the souvenir mile, the people are very friendly. After the delicious lunch in the highlands, some of us went hiking into the Scalesia forest for finches, meanwhile another part of the group, searched for tortoise at El Chato Reserve. It was an amazing experience to realize how much those little tortoises can grow and how fast they can move! Charles Darwin probably was right when he calculated that they could walk four miles per day if they have a purpose. In this case a friendly tortoise came towards us to be in the picture. She wanted to be famous on the World Wide Web!
What a wonderful day watching tortoises of all ages and stages. In the morning the “little giant” tortoises at the Charles Darwin Research Station (one of the captive breeding and repatriation programs) gave us an example on how conservation programs can be really successful. Back in the late 1960’s, 14 tortoises were found on Española Island. Today, there are more than 1000 tortoises “running” all over the island and reproducing!
As we were brought back to civilization for a day, we helped the local economy and shopped in town for a little while. Along the souvenir mile, the people are very friendly. After the delicious lunch in the highlands, some of us went hiking into the Scalesia forest for finches, meanwhile another part of the group, searched for tortoise at El Chato Reserve. It was an amazing experience to realize how much those little tortoises can grow and how fast they can move! Charles Darwin probably was right when he calculated that they could walk four miles per day if they have a purpose. In this case a friendly tortoise came towards us to be in the picture. She wanted to be famous on the World Wide Web!
