Santa Cruz Island
Today we visited one of my favorite islands, Santa Cruz. The reasons are many; it is one of the oldest islands that we have in Galápagos (around three million years old); this is also a very green and lush area and we had a great opportunity to see a good number of giant tortoises. It is an important place because in 1959 the Charles Darwin Station established their facilities to protect and to study the unique type of endemic species found in the archipelago; and finally it is important to me, because it happens to be my home island!
The Charles Darwin station gave us the great opportunity to see the breeding programs for giant tortoises, starting from the baby stage who are only a few weeks old, to some of the really big ones, around a couple of hundreds years old! The breeding programs have been very successful, and thanks to them, we now have more than three thousand baby tortoises repatriated back to their original islands in the wild. For this program to be called successful, the Galápagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Station have worked for about thirty years. It was a hard job, but we are very proud of these people for their willingness to help Galápagos.
At the end of our walk we visited the famous Lonesome Gorg. He is still the last one of his kind, but luckily in the last few months, he has been making headlines around the world because of the finding of eggs that have been possibly fertilized by him. This will mean the end of a lonely life for Lonesome George, who would clearly have to look for a new nick name as he won’t be so lonesome anymore!
During the afternoon we visited the land of the giant tortoises in the wild; this place is located right in the middle of their migration path and we indeed found many of them. If I have to guess, I would say that some of them were well over two hundred years old! They were definitely huge!
Undoubtedly our guest had a great time today exploring this area, and of course took a lot of pictures of them. The mystery of how these giant animals arrived to the islands has been finally solved!
Today we visited one of my favorite islands, Santa Cruz. The reasons are many; it is one of the oldest islands that we have in Galápagos (around three million years old); this is also a very green and lush area and we had a great opportunity to see a good number of giant tortoises. It is an important place because in 1959 the Charles Darwin Station established their facilities to protect and to study the unique type of endemic species found in the archipelago; and finally it is important to me, because it happens to be my home island!
The Charles Darwin station gave us the great opportunity to see the breeding programs for giant tortoises, starting from the baby stage who are only a few weeks old, to some of the really big ones, around a couple of hundreds years old! The breeding programs have been very successful, and thanks to them, we now have more than three thousand baby tortoises repatriated back to their original islands in the wild. For this program to be called successful, the Galápagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Station have worked for about thirty years. It was a hard job, but we are very proud of these people for their willingness to help Galápagos.
At the end of our walk we visited the famous Lonesome Gorg. He is still the last one of his kind, but luckily in the last few months, he has been making headlines around the world because of the finding of eggs that have been possibly fertilized by him. This will mean the end of a lonely life for Lonesome George, who would clearly have to look for a new nick name as he won’t be so lonesome anymore!
During the afternoon we visited the land of the giant tortoises in the wild; this place is located right in the middle of their migration path and we indeed found many of them. If I have to guess, I would say that some of them were well over two hundred years old! They were definitely huge!
Undoubtedly our guest had a great time today exploring this area, and of course took a lot of pictures of them. The mystery of how these giant animals arrived to the islands has been finally solved!
