Santa Cruz Island
During this past week we have visited different islands in this archipelago; some of these islands were very old, around four million years, and others are young, on which the lava cooled off only few years ago.
Today we are visiting a very important island for the Galápagos ecosystem: this is Santa Cruz Island, where the Charles Darwin Research Station was established in 1964. In those days we had different programs and projects to protect the wild life.
One of the most important programs today, I think, is the program to restore the population of giant tortoises and land iguanas of different islands. One good example of this program is the case of the tortoises from Española Island.
In the eighteen-hundreds many sailors disembarked on this island trying to find water and food, they were very disappointed when they arrived at the coast of Española and did not find any fresh water available, they were walking inland up to the highlands and found giant creatures. Over time, they collected so many tortoises from this island that the population dropped down to fourteen, and of the fourteen there have been only two males to survive. The population was very close to the extinction until some scientists from the Darwin Station decided to take these fourteen to their center. Nowadays we have a population of about two thousand baby tortoises walking freely on this island.
Today we saw tortoises in the center, but also some of them on the highlands of Santa Cruz, some of them were so big that we estimated it weight of about six hundred pounds and a possible age of around couple hundred years!
Close to sunset time we visited a very nice and calm town called Puerto Ayora, where we bought souvenirs to carry some wonderful memories back home.
During this past week we have visited different islands in this archipelago; some of these islands were very old, around four million years, and others are young, on which the lava cooled off only few years ago.
Today we are visiting a very important island for the Galápagos ecosystem: this is Santa Cruz Island, where the Charles Darwin Research Station was established in 1964. In those days we had different programs and projects to protect the wild life.
One of the most important programs today, I think, is the program to restore the population of giant tortoises and land iguanas of different islands. One good example of this program is the case of the tortoises from Española Island.
In the eighteen-hundreds many sailors disembarked on this island trying to find water and food, they were very disappointed when they arrived at the coast of Española and did not find any fresh water available, they were walking inland up to the highlands and found giant creatures. Over time, they collected so many tortoises from this island that the population dropped down to fourteen, and of the fourteen there have been only two males to survive. The population was very close to the extinction until some scientists from the Darwin Station decided to take these fourteen to their center. Nowadays we have a population of about two thousand baby tortoises walking freely on this island.
Today we saw tortoises in the center, but also some of them on the highlands of Santa Cruz, some of them were so big that we estimated it weight of about six hundred pounds and a possible age of around couple hundred years!
Close to sunset time we visited a very nice and calm town called Puerto Ayora, where we bought souvenirs to carry some wonderful memories back home.
