Santa Cruz Island
I grew up surrounded by tortoises, so for me they were part of the landscape, as cows are for many people in country sides around the world. I lived in the highlands of Santa Cruz, and I knew that when the rainy season started, tortoises disappeared; they moved to the arid areas to breed and nest. And again, slowly but surely they came back. They were spotted around my parent’s farm in June, July, at the beginning of the dry and cool season. As a kid I never considered them slow animals. They do move when they want to get somewhere, and a tortoise you see in the morning can be underneath any bush a couple of miles away in the afternoon.
When I went to the mainland for the first time and visited cattle farms in the highlands of Ecuador, I felt as if something was missing. It was the tortoises! In my brain, green pastures went together with giant tortoises. But Galápagos tortoises are unique to this archipelago in the whole world, and every inhabitant of Santa Cruz today knows about its importance and rareness. Actually Santa Cruz tortoises are the healthiest population in the Galápagos, reaching the number of approximately 5000 individuals. I can only dream about how it was two hundred years ago, before the whaling times, when we may have had ten times more than that number. However I can say that we do have more tortoises now than 30 years ago. Thanks to the Charles Darwin Research Station and the National Park Service, hundreds of giants have been repatriated to their home islands after breeding them in the Research center.
Today we saw both, Galápagos tortoises in the breeding areas, and wild and free tortoises in the highlands, maybe the same ones I got to meet as a child.
I grew up surrounded by tortoises, so for me they were part of the landscape, as cows are for many people in country sides around the world. I lived in the highlands of Santa Cruz, and I knew that when the rainy season started, tortoises disappeared; they moved to the arid areas to breed and nest. And again, slowly but surely they came back. They were spotted around my parent’s farm in June, July, at the beginning of the dry and cool season. As a kid I never considered them slow animals. They do move when they want to get somewhere, and a tortoise you see in the morning can be underneath any bush a couple of miles away in the afternoon.
When I went to the mainland for the first time and visited cattle farms in the highlands of Ecuador, I felt as if something was missing. It was the tortoises! In my brain, green pastures went together with giant tortoises. But Galápagos tortoises are unique to this archipelago in the whole world, and every inhabitant of Santa Cruz today knows about its importance and rareness. Actually Santa Cruz tortoises are the healthiest population in the Galápagos, reaching the number of approximately 5000 individuals. I can only dream about how it was two hundred years ago, before the whaling times, when we may have had ten times more than that number. However I can say that we do have more tortoises now than 30 years ago. Thanks to the Charles Darwin Research Station and the National Park Service, hundreds of giants have been repatriated to their home islands after breeding them in the Research center.
Today we saw both, Galápagos tortoises in the breeding areas, and wild and free tortoises in the highlands, maybe the same ones I got to meet as a child.
