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QUITO, Nov 9, 2023 (AFP) – Endangered giant Galapagos tortoises continue to swallow plastic and other human waste despite a ban on disposable plastic items in the Ecuadoran archipelago, according to a study published Wednesday. Turtles of the species Chelonoidis porteri ingest plastic in and around urban centers on the island of Santa Cruz, according to the study by the Charles Darwin Foundation, which is dedicated to conservation efforts in the Galapagos. Researchers analyzed 5,500 […]
PUERTO AYORA, Ecuador (AFP) – Ecuador created a massive new marine reserve Friday north of its Galapagos islands, forming a Pacific corridor up to Costa Rica’s Cocos Island National Park to preserve species of migratory fauna, such as sharks. President Guillermo Lasso, on board a scientific vessel from the Galapagos National Park (PNG) anchored in the bay of Puerto Ayora off Santa Cruz Island, signed the decree creating the new reserve called “Hermandad” (Brotherhood). To […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Scientific experts sent to the Galapagos Islands to count a critically endangered lizard species estimate there to be just 211 pink iguanas left, local authorities said Friday. Around 30 scientists and Galapagos park rangers took part in the expedition this month on Wolf Volcano, in the north of Isabela Island — the largest on the archipelago. “In the census, 53 iguanas were located and (temporarily) captured, 94 percent of which live […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Diego the giant Galapagos tortoise whose tireless efforts are credited with almost single-handedly saving his once-threatened species, was put out to pasture Monday on his native island after decades of breeding in captivity, Ecuador’s environment minister said. Diego was shipped out from the Galapagos National Park’s breeding program on Santa Cruz to remote and uninhabited Espanola. “We are closing an important chapter” in the management of the park, said the minister […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — A scientific expedition to the Galapagos Islands has discovered a tortoise with a “strong” genetic link to a presumed-extinct subspecies made famous by the popular Lonesome George, national park officials said Friday. George, the last known member of the Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii Pinta tortoise species, died in 2012 in captivity aged over 100 after refusing to provide any offspring. The Galapagos National Parks (PNG) said the expedition had discovered a young, […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — A volcano erupted on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos, Ecuadorian authorities said, spewing lava on the ecologically sensitive environment. La Cumbre volcano on Fernandina island, one of the youngest in the archipelago, began erupting Sunday evening, Galapagos National Park (PNG) officials said in a statement. The 1,467 meter high (4,813 feet) volcano has a crack along its south-eastern flank and “a lava flow descends to the coast”, PNG added. The […]
SANTA CRUZ, Ecuador (AFP) — A tortoise thought to be a Chelonoidis phantasticus, a species believed to have gone extinct about a century ago, has been discovered during an expedition to Fernandina Island in Ecuador’s Galapagos archipelago.
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) – A group of more than 1,400 iguanas have been reintroduced to an Ecuadoran island in the Galapagos archipelago around two centuries after they disappeared from there, authorities said on Monday. The Galapagos land iguanas from North Seymour Island were freed onto Santiago Island as part of an ecological restoration program, the National Galapagos Park authority said in a statement. The last recorded sighting of iguanas in Santiago Island had been made […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Six land iguanas, endemic to the Galapagos Islands, have been relocated within the Pacific archipelago due to food shortages and overpopulation on the islet where they lived, Ecuador’s Galapagos National Park said Tuesday. The reptiles were moved from the islet of Venice to Dragon Hill, on the neighboring island of Santa Cruz. “The shortage of rain, little food and the high number of land iguanas on the islet of Venice” forced […]
by Jordi MIRO Agence France-Presse SANTA CRUZ, Ecuador (AFP) — For millions of years, new-born hammerhead sharks have grown up in nurseries sheltered by the mangrove swamps and reefs of the Galapagos Islands, safe from all human threat. But until November, biologists had no idea the sharks had their own hideaway that could hold some of the final secrets of this remote archipelago 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off South America’s Pacific coast. “It was quite […]
