Sadly, Lonesome George earned his name from the fact that, despite an exhaustive search of the island and zoos right around the world, no potential mating partners were ever found and, when George died in June 2012, the Pinta tortoises were declared officially extinct.įortunately, some hybrid Pinta tortoises were found on Wolf Volcano, along with the partially Floreana specimens, though not enough to start a breeding programme. While Pinta’s tortoise was thought to have gone the same way of the dinosaurs some time in the early-20th century, a survivor was discovered in 1971. This is part of a broader environmental restoration project on Floreana, which will also see the removal of invasive species of rodents and cats, as well as reintroducing other extinct native animal populations. A breeding programme is now underway to rebuild the population before they make the voyage back to their home island. In November 2015, 19 of these hybrids were brought to the Tortoise Center on Santa Cruz Island to join the four already there with some Floreana tortoise ancestors. Geneticists from Yale University discovered a hybrid species on Wolf Volcano, in the north of Isabela, which has some Floreana tortoise in its ancestry. However, before that happened, some are thought to have made it to Isabela Island, the largest of the Galápagos Islands, possibly having been left there by passing whalers. They survived for a couple of decades after Charles Darwin’s famous 1835 visit to the Galápagos Islands before being hunted into extinction.
The giant tortoises on Floreana faired only a little better than those on Santa Fe.