Prolific Tortoise Returns Home After Saving Species

Diego is one very horny tortoise (via Jdegenhardt/Flickr)

A 100-year-old tortoise is heading home to Ecuador after almost single-footedly saving his species from extinction.

Galapagos giant tortoise Diego should expect quite a welcoming party upon his return to native Española Island in March.

Thanks to 15 adult Testudines participating in a captive breeding program, some 1,800 land-dwelling turtles have been reinstated on the archipelago.

“This shows that they are able to grow, they are able to reproduce, they are able to develop,” according to Jorge Carrion, director of the Galapagos National Parks Directorate (GNPD).

Five decades ago, there were only two males and 12 females of the species, Chelonoidis hoodensis, alive on Española—too wide spread to procreate.

Now, park rangers believe Diego alone is responsible for fathering at least 40 percent of the 2,000-strong population.

The prolific patriarch’s history (unlike his sperm) is a bit murky: GNPD reckons he was taken from the Galapagos in the first half of the 20th century by a scientific expedition. Diego was then recruited from California’s San Diego Zoo, where he lived for “several decades,” to join the breeding program, set up in the mid-1960s.

Almost 80 years (and a quarantine period) later, he’s homeward bound—to his original neighborhood in the Pacific Ocean.

“He’s contributed a large percentage to the lineage that we are returning to Española,” Carrion told AFP. “There’s a feeling of happiness to have the possibility of returning that tortoise to his natural state.”

Weighing in at an impressive 175 pounds, Diego is nearly 35 inches long and five feet tall—”if he really stretches his legs and neck,” AFP said.

Early last year, a rare species of giant tortoise not seen in 113 years (and feared to be extinct) was found in a remote island in the Galapagos.

Ecuador’s Ministry of the Environment announced the discovery of an adult female Fernandina Giant Tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus), possibly more than 100 years old, on a remote island in the Galapagos.

The tortoise was relocated to a breeding center on Santa Cruz Island, where she will undergo genetic tests.

More on Geek.com:

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• More Than 1,500 Live Turtles Worth Almost $100K Found in Luggage
• Giant Mating Pythons Plunge Through Couple’s Ceiling in Australia

Source: https://www.geek.com/news/prolific-tortoise-returns-home-after-saving-species-1816050/?source
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