N2TORTS said:GC News: February 3, 2010
Team of Veterinarians Prepare Hybrid Tortoises for Release on Pinta Island in 2010
In November 2009, a group of veterinarians, working with the Galapagos National Park (GNP), prepared 39 hybrid tortoises slated to be the pioneer group to initiate the return of tortoises to Pinta Island. Project Pinta is a multi-year project aimed at the restoration of the island following the successful eradication of goats on Pinta in 2003. While complete island restoration will require the eventual repopulation of Pinta with a reproductive tortoise population, scientists and managers are awaiting the final results from genetic analyses of a massive sampling of tortoises before making the final selection of which tortoises to use. To initiate the return of tortoises, critical ecosystem engineers during this important period of vegetative recovery, a special group of tortoises will be released onto Pinta. To ensure that this group of hybrid tortoises will not compromise any future efforts to reestablish a reproductive population, veterinarians sterilized them.
Yes, because humans have decimated island tortoise populations on both the Galapagos Archipelago and the Seychelles Archipelago (which includes Aldabra), restoration efforts often involve using tortoises from nearby islands when the native population/subspecies is extinct. This is similar to other restoration projects, like the one that reintroduce peregrine falcons to the Great Plains after DDT, using falcons from other locations. When the native animals are gone, the next best thing is to use the next closest relative as a replacement.
Notice, however, that the veterinarians sterilized the tortoises in the project mentioned above, so as not to compromise any future restoration efforts.
There is talk of doing similar Pleistocene Rewilding in parts of the US and Europe using modern relatives of extinct mammals (bolson tortoises, horses, camels, llamas, elephants, cheetahs, and lions). This is controversial, but again, the justification is that since the ecosystems are disturbed due to human activity, it is justifiable to use closely related proxies when the native animals are extinct. Interesting topic, and one that I am involved in, but we can save discussions on reintroducing bolson tortoises, horses, and cheetahs for a Debatable Topics thread some other time.