A Slow and Steady Recovery

I feel as if when you make a trip to the Galápagos Islands, the one thing you can’t return in good conscience without having seen are the giant tortoises. On my fifth day, I finally got to cross that event off my to-do list.

Before the arrival of humans, San Cristóbal was home to two different subspecies of giant tortoises. One of these subspecies could be found on the south end of the island, but unfortunately became extinct in 1933 due to extraction by whalers in previous centuries.

The other subspecies of tortoises (Geonchelone Chatmensis) are located on the northeastern end of the island. They have been a little luckier in their fates. These tortoises are estimated to have a current population of around 1,400. Although that number may seem high for such a small area of the world, these tortoises are still listed as "vulnerable" on the endangered species list.

As vulnerable as they sill may be, this population would surely be far less without the help of the Galapaguera de Cerro Colorado; San Cristóbal’s tortoise reserve and breeding center.

The Jatun Sacha crew headed up to the Galapaguera after a few hours work at the station's base camp that morning. The area immediately around the Galapaguera is rather sparse, and so we spent the first part of the afternoon replanting and watering special endemic plants to help restore the area back to its natural habitat. Like all the work at Jatun Sacha, this was no easy task. The area is naturally dry, and we had to use a pickaxe to dig the holes in the ground. Watering these plants was no easy task either. We had to fill up jugs with water from a trough, and lug the heavy containers a good distance to get to the different plants before we started the process over again.

Once we were finished, we were rewarded with a break and a visit to the Galapaguera itself. The reserve includes an interpretation center, breeding center, and interpretive trails to walk and view grown turtles in their semi-natural habitat.

With my camera in hand I set off up the first trail, and a short while later came across the breeding center itself. Galapagos tortoises mate once a year, and after that, each female tortoise lays anywhere from 12-16 eggs. Park rangers go out and collect these eggs once they are laid and bring them to the Galapaguera where they are placed in a dark box for 30 days. After that first month, the incubation process begins, and continues for about 90 days until the eggs hatch. The baby tortoises are then transferred to growing pens where they will remain for the first two years of their lives, until they are big enough to fend off most predators in the wild. They are then transferred back to their exact nesting spot, and live the remainder of their lives in their natural habitats.

If I wasn’t aware the baby tortoises I was looking at were of the Galápagos variety, I would have never guessed they would eventually become the giants their parents are. All of them were small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, (had I been able to hold them, which I was not) but have the potential to reach up to 880 pounds in their adult lives.  

Although over hunting did not help the tortoise population, this was not the main reason tortoise populations on San Cristóbal began to dwindle.  When humans settled on the island, they brought along a variety of animals like rats, cats, dogs and cattle. While these animals also contributed to the decline of the tortoise population, none were as harmful to the species as the goats.

To put it one way, goats are not picky eaters. When they came to the Galápagos they ate just about every plant in sight, including the bark off of trees. By doing so they simultaneously destroyed the giant tortoises' natural habitat and source of food. Had the tortoises evolved to be much faster creatures, it is possible they would have been able to compete with the goats. Of course, their genes have yet to make that evolutionary change, and therefore the more agile goats were able to completely overgraze an area before the tortoises knew what hit them.

The way goats graze is also much different from other animals. Cows, for example, graze by cutting down plants and grass with their teeth, allowing them to regrow eventually. When a goat grazes, they pull the plants roots completely out of the ground, leaving no possibility for regrowth, forever changing the environment.

On top of everything, these goats had no regard for tortoise nesting areas. On their way to find new food they would completely trample eggs in nests, and crush all possibility of future generations of tortoises.

In recent years, Ecuador's National Park Service set forth a plan to begin eradicating the island's goats. By this point, the flocks of goats were so dense hunters began the process by aerial hunting via helicopters. This method quickly and effectively reduced the goat population, but the job didn't end there. The next step was to hunt the goats by land. Hunters were aided by specially trained dogs, raised and trained within the breeding center itself.

Finally, the next, and possibly more interesting portion of the eradication process began. This process was known as “The Judas Project” and used special “Judas” goats (who as you soon see were fittingly named after the biblical figure) to continue the eradication process. Now that the goats weren’t so densely populated all over the island, they were a lot more difficult to find.  Because of this, the National Park Service came up with a plan to designate special sterilized goats. Fitted with a tracking collar, the Judas goats were sent back into the wild where, being the social animals they are, would eventually find a new flock to join and through their tacking collars lead the hunters right to it. The hunters would then kill off all the goats except the Judas, and the process would begin again. Over time this method led to the eventual eradication of goats on San Cristóbal Island.

While this may not be the happiest story for the goats, the project was extremely effective in the extermination of a serious threat to the declining population of rare tortoises. Although the regrowth of the tortoise population has taken years, the results are continuously showing that the numbers are heading in the right direction. What began as a problem caused by humans is now a problem being solved by humans; a slow and steady process for gentle giants of the same nature.