Conservationists said on Tuesday that they have brought giant tortoises found on the Galapagos island of Espanola back from the brink of extinction. They believe that soon humans might be able to leave the reptiles alone.
The tortoises, which can live for two centuries, now number about 1,000, up from just 15 five decades ago, according to Reuters. Conservationists believe they can now sustain themselves, according to a study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
"We saved a species from the brink of extinction and now can step back out of the process. The tortoises can care for themselves," said James Gibbs, a vertebrate conservation biology professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry who led the study, according to Reuters.
The Galapagos archipelago, which is located in the Pacific about 600 miles west of Ecuador, is home to a number of creatures that helped inspire Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection after visiting in 1835.
Galapagos tortoises measure 3 feet long with a saddle-backed shell. They can live up to 150 or 200 years, eating just grasses and leaves during the wet season and cactus during the dry season on an arid, low, rocky island measuring just 23 square miles, according to Reuters.
The island is now covered with woody vegetation unsuited for tortoises, unlike the grassy place it was once. Gibbs said it could take hundreds of years for cactuses to reach previous levels.
Gibbs said the population numbered around 5,000 to 10,000 tortoises people arrived.
"The tortoises were hunted by buccaneers, whalers and other sea goers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries," said Linda Cayot, a herpetologist who is science advisor to the Galapagos Conservancy group, according to Reuters.
"They collected them live, stacked them in their holds, and had fresh meat on their long voyages. Tortoises can live up to a year without food or water, so a natural source of fresh meat," she added.
By the time the islands were protected as a national park in 1959, the tortoises had been given up as extinct.
Just 14 tortoises were found on Espanola, 12 females and two males. They were taken into captivity and a third male was found in the San Diego Zoo.
The population was rebuilt from those 15 through a breeding program in captivity before they were reintroduced to the island, according to Reuters.
"Nobody knew how to breed tortoises in captivity and the best zoos around the world had failed. The Galapagos National Park figured it out and actually became exceedingly effective at it," Gibbs said.
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