![]() The female tortoise, thought to be roughly 100 years old, was taken by the team to a breeding center on Santa Cruz Island, a decision Tapia made because the area where she had been living had few food sources nearby, and, if left on Fernandina, finding her again would have been difficult. "It created hope for people to know conservation is possible and that changing human activities is necessary for it to continue," Tapia said. ![]() Malaga was the first to spot the tortoise-at first, nearly 2.5 miles away and blending into a patch of vegetation-but it was a triumph for the whole team. When Tapia saw a tortoise bed-soil had been pushed aside and there were clear prints in the dirt from its carapace and feet-he knew they were close. It wasn't until around midday that they spotted possible tortoise feces on a patch measuring about a third of a square mile. in search of green patches among the island's innumerable lava flows. On this particular Sunday, February 17, the team set out at 6 a.m. "It was a clear indication the tortoises were still there," Tapia says. ![]() Its designation was then changed to critically endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had flagged the Fernandina giant tortoise on its Red List as possibly extinct until 2017, two years after Malaga came across the reptile's feces in the park and three years after the inauguration of the GTRI. The last time a confirmed sighting of the species was registered was in 1906. ![]() Plus Forrest Galante, a host and biologist with Animal Planet, which funded the expedition, were overwhelmed when they found the female Chelonoidis phantasticus on Fernandina, an active shield volcano and the youngest of the Galápagos Islands. Tapia and a team of four rangers from the Galápagos National Park-Jeffreys Malaga, Eduardo Vilema, Roberto Ballesteros, and Simon Villamar. "For me it was the most important achievement of my life because I have been working on tortoise conservation for 30 years," says the director of the nonprofit Galápagos Conservancy's Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative (GTRI) and leader of the expedition. When Washington Tapia found a Fernandina giant tortoise on its namesake island in the Galápagos, it was like winning an Academy Award. ![]()
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