Goodbye George, Hello Fernanda!
Thought to be extinct, the rediscovery of the Fernandina giant tortoise was celebrated globally. But the race is on to help the species avoid extinction.
SHANEY HUDSON
When the world’s rarest creature died in 2012 it made headline news around the globe. For years Lonesome George, a Pinta Island tortoise, had been the poster child for conservation efforts in the Galápagos Islands. The last remaining living specimen of his kind, a sign erected for tourists outside George’s enclosure put it best:
“Whatever happens to this single animal, let him always remind us that the fate of all living things on Earth is in human hands.”
With his death at age 101, his entire species became extinct. And yet in 2019, a new hope emerged: the discovery of a Fernandina giant tortoise originally believed extinct. “The existence of tortoises on Fernandina Island has long been a mystery,” says Dr. James Gibbs, Vice President of Science and Conservation at Galápagos Conservancy and tortoise expert at the State University of New York.
“Securing these last tortoises is urgent. They may have been rediscovered at the point of extinction.”
“Occasional signs of tortoises have been reported in the intervening years,” says Dr Gibbs. “With Fernanda’s discovery we can say tortoises on Fernandina still exist.”
Saving the Galápagos tortoises has been a gargantuan task, with the population thought to be 10 to 15 per cent of what it once was on the World Heritage-listed island archipelago. For most species of Galápagos tortoise, it was human intervention that led to their decline. Ships’ crews used them as a convenient source of fresh meat, and they also introduced species like rats that attacked their eggs, while goats destroyed their habitat.
On Fernandina Island the endemic species Chelonoidis Phantasticus – better known as the Fernandina giant tortoise – was believed to have been wiped out by volcanic activity. Previously, the sole living specimen – a male – was discovered (and killed) during the California Academy of Sciences expedition in 1905-06.
The realisation in 2019 that the species was not extinct – made by Washington Tapia, Director of Conservation at Galápagos Conservancy, during an expedition arranged with the Galápagos National Park Directorate and supported by Animal Planet – was completely unexpected. “The emotional high I experienced as a participant in perhaps the most important find of the century – a live tortoise on Fernandina Island – is indescribable,” said Washington in a blog post for the Conservatory.
Nicknamed Fernanda, the tortoise is thought to be around a hundred years old. Confirming she was indeed a Fernandina giant tortoise, and not a transitory species that floated from one island to another, involved a complex genetic investigation by scientists at Yale University, who will officially publish their results soon.
Fernanda was taken to Santa Cruz Island’s tortoise breeding centre and placed in quarantine. There were two motives for the decision: the first was that finding her again on the large island would be challenging, the other was that Fernandina Island has the most active volcano in the Galápagos. In fact, there have been over thirty recorded eruptions, the last in January 2020, and it’s for this reason there’s urgency to return to Fernandina Island and find more living specimens. Biologists from the Galápagos Conservancy suspect there are at least two more tortoises still on the island – and at most, ten.
“The next step is to finalise the search of the island,” says Dr Gibbs. “The search is urgent for two reasons. The population is so small it is likely imperilled for that reason alone, and there is also a very active volcano, erupting almost every year. “So, securing these last tortoises is urgent. They may have been rediscovered at the point of extinction.”
For Dr Gibbs, a successful expedition would be “finding a minimally viable breeding population of tortoises from the island – at least three females and three males. These might be aggregated on the island into safe habitats with good food availability, water supply and nesting sites away from the areas most affected by volcanic activity,” he says. “Or they may be brought into captivity to head-starting for release back to the island.”
Since 1965, the Galápagos Islands have undertaken a captive breeding and rearing programme as part of their conservation strategy to restore the tortoise population. It has been a success: on Española Island, for example, over 7,000 juvenile tortoises have been released, and the population has been reproducing naturally since the early 1990s. Finding a viable breeding partner for Fernanda is key to saving the critically endangered species. While George was never able to find a mate, conservationists hope that Fernanda will be more lucky in love.
Director of the Galápagos National Park Directorate, Danny Rueda Córdova, has announced that a team will return to Fernandina Island to search for more giant tortoises in September 2021. “We desperately want to avoid the fate of Lonesome George,” he says.
“The world is still full of mystery,” says Dr Gibbs, who is preparing for the next expedition. “Species assumed extinct, even very large and charismatic ones like giant tortoises, may still be living. We can help them ‘de-extinct’ if we act in time.”
