Here’s a story that conjured some old memories and brought a smile to my face.
Last month, 158 giant Galapagos tortoises were reintroduced to the island of Floreana in the southern region of the Galapagos archipelago where the local species has been extinct for 150 years.
Why is this news, you may well ask? Well, for two reasons. This is the first reintroduction of an island-specific tortoise species to their home island and is the first of twelve more that are being worked on at the Darwin center in Academy Bay.
And, second, I have been lucky enough to sail to and cruise the Galapagos islands twice, once before Ecuador created the national park and once after. They were two very different experiences.
On our first visit to the islands, 600 miles west of Ecuador, we were free to roam the archipelago and explore the islands and the flora and fauna in much the same natural condition that Charles Darwin had found it in the 1830s.
On the second visit in the 1990s, we found the islands governed as a park and our cruising mobility was strictly limited to the anchorages at Wreck Bay and Academy Bay. This was intended to protect the natural flora and fauna.
In the 1800s, the islands were a watering and provisional stop for whalers from New England and Britain. They captured tortoises for food and left pigs and goats to reproduce for food in years to come. These non-indigenous animals gradually destroyed the tortoises’ natural habitats and by the 1870s the tortoise population on Floreana was virtually extinct.
We’ve spent many a night anchored in Floreans’s Post Office Bay where out-bound whalers of old would leave mail to be delivered by whalers who were headed home. Today, tourists can leave mail in the post box and it will be posted by the Whittmer family who have run a small hotel on the island since the 1930s. It will be delivered with that truly unique Floreana, Galapagos post mark.
The restoration of the island-specific species of Galapagos tortoises is a multi-year project that goes hand in hand with the gradual elimination of the non-indigenous animals. Both projects are actively funded and going forward.
When we were there on our first visit, we were asked by locals to hunt pigs and goats as we explored the islands, which we did. Many an afternoon was spent roasting that day’s kill for dinner. But, the effort needed to be much bigger than local hunters and itinerant cruisers could provide. Once the national park was formed and with the Ecuadorian government funding the Darwin Station, a proper eradication program was put into place.
One day on our second visit, we rented horses and hired a guide to lead us up the central mountain on Santa Cruz to look for tortoises in the wild. After a couple of hours and a few false starts, we finally found a marshy area and low and behold there were three giant Galapagos tortoises lolling in the muddy water.
We left the horses with the guide and crept silently toward them through the bushes. They move slowly if at all so it was startling for a large tortoise to raise his big, blocky head and look at us with prehistoric yellow eyes. And then, it hissed its warning.
So, 158 Floreana tortoises raised at the Darwin Station are now home again on their island. In the grand scheme of things, that’s got to be a good thing.
