This is one of the first baby tortoises on Galapagos in 150 years

After more than 150 years, conservationists have finally reported finding baby saddleback tortoises on the Galapagos Island of Pinzón.

The report, published in the journal Nature, said that they’d found 10 newly-hatched tortoises, though they expect the actual number to be bigger.

 

“I suspect there were 100 to 300,” said Dr. James Gibbs, from the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

On a blog article he wrote for the Galapagos Conservancy, he said that with the baby tortoises, the population now numbers over 500, almost triple of the original population on Pinzón when the Galapagos National Park was established in 1959.

 

The tortoise population has long been under threat of extinction because of invasive rats preying on their eggs. In 2012, a helicopter flew over the island of Pinzón in an attempt to cover the area with poisoned rat bait. In 2015, there seem to be no rats left on the island.

 

“As a biologist I have had a hard time comprehending that every rat was killed,” Gibbs said. “But they seem to have done it.”

 

A similar success story took place last year, when a species of giant tortoise on the Española Galapagos Island bounced back from the brink of extinction.

Gibbs was also involved in the Española conservation efforts. —Bea Montenegro/NB/TJD, GMA News