Santa Cruz Island
Puerto Ayora was bordered by calm seas today when we arrived to Academy Bay at six o’clock in the morning.
The sound of the anchor and chain dragging and falling into the water woke us up from deep dreams of the whales that had impressed us yesterday morning. The town was still sleepy when we went ashore; later on, we rode by bus to the Charles Darwin Research Station and the National Park facilities. We saw how our programs and managements are coming into life from here and to welcome tourists from all over the world. The Station has been working along with Galápagos National Park Service since the beginning of its foundation. The reptiles’ breeding in captivity program has been a success for around twenty five years and the result is restoring vulnerable species that were at the edge of extinction.
Two male tortoises make the difference. One, “Dieguito” is father to over half of the fourteen hundred baby tortoises repatriated to Espanola island. Diego happened to live for several years in the San Diego Zoo, and later on joined the remaining group of twelve females and two males in the eighties. Lonesome George is a saddleback male tortoise found in the early seventies in Pinta Island, and so far there has not been any other tortoise from same subspecies to be found. Hopes were raised to breed George with a female that might match; a reward was offered of ten thousand American dollars to who could give information about it. So far not any result yet, but for a while now two females from Wolf volcano that were geographically closer to George's origin are sharing the corral.
The highlands of Santa Cruz represented a chance to observe these giant reptiles in the wild; we are reminded about whalers and buccaneers which walked on this path collecting them for food just a few hundred years ago. Tortoises were removed by the hundreds and even thousands; for only fifty years we humans started to protect, learning and to live with them.
These creatures are a mystery because of their longevity and a single one could easily survive several human generations.
Back to town we understood how much peoples' lives have changed and tortoises’ didn’t.
Puerto Ayora was bordered by calm seas today when we arrived to Academy Bay at six o’clock in the morning.
The sound of the anchor and chain dragging and falling into the water woke us up from deep dreams of the whales that had impressed us yesterday morning. The town was still sleepy when we went ashore; later on, we rode by bus to the Charles Darwin Research Station and the National Park facilities. We saw how our programs and managements are coming into life from here and to welcome tourists from all over the world. The Station has been working along with Galápagos National Park Service since the beginning of its foundation. The reptiles’ breeding in captivity program has been a success for around twenty five years and the result is restoring vulnerable species that were at the edge of extinction.
Two male tortoises make the difference. One, “Dieguito” is father to over half of the fourteen hundred baby tortoises repatriated to Espanola island. Diego happened to live for several years in the San Diego Zoo, and later on joined the remaining group of twelve females and two males in the eighties. Lonesome George is a saddleback male tortoise found in the early seventies in Pinta Island, and so far there has not been any other tortoise from same subspecies to be found. Hopes were raised to breed George with a female that might match; a reward was offered of ten thousand American dollars to who could give information about it. So far not any result yet, but for a while now two females from Wolf volcano that were geographically closer to George's origin are sharing the corral.
The highlands of Santa Cruz represented a chance to observe these giant reptiles in the wild; we are reminded about whalers and buccaneers which walked on this path collecting them for food just a few hundred years ago. Tortoises were removed by the hundreds and even thousands; for only fifty years we humans started to protect, learning and to live with them.
These creatures are a mystery because of their longevity and a single one could easily survive several human generations.
Back to town we understood how much peoples' lives have changed and tortoises’ didn’t.
