now we're going to take a few moments to
pause and look away from the most
pressing stories of the day and reflect
on a tortoise called Diego not just any
tortoise a giant one whose libido has
saved his species from extinction no
less and he's retiring here is in the
Galapagos Islands he's a hundred so this
retirements not unreasonable and
scientists estimate that he's fathered
up to nine hundred giant tortoises which
are all alive today you heard that right
nine hundred for decades he's been kept
in captivity on Santa Cruz Island as
part of a breeding program before that
he was in a zoo in San Diego now though
Diego's being returned to where he
started off on a tiny uninhabited island
called Espanola from which he was taken
in the 1920s well Emma Ridley works as a
marine biologist in the Galapagos
Islands she's with us now from Santa
Cruz and ever I understand you know
Diego tell us more about him guiding
visitors to the installations where they
have the captive breeding program we got
to see him pretty much every week and
what kind of life can you expect on this
new island on his new Island I'm sure
you had a lot more space there's plenty
of food there for the tourists is the
environment isn't that different to the
one where he was in his pen so I'm sure
he managed to settle in very rapidly and
in terms of his role in avoiding
extinction for his species am i over
playing it in saying that he was central
to avoiding that it was a very important
tortoise there where the population was
almost given to extinction there were 12
females to males from the island and
then George and then Diego came along
and he filed it probably about 40% on
his own of all the young tortoise
hatchlings that were brought back to
Hispaniola now of course I'm gonna wish
him a very long retirement how long
would we expect Diego to live for
well they estimate that he's about a
hundred years old now it's hard to know
exactly how long giant tortoises can
live but scientists think it can be up
to 150 years maybe even a little more so
you should be around there for quite a
bit longer okay that's good to hear and
just while that's going you know
everyone curious to know more broadly
how things are on the Galapagos Islands
it's a popular place for people to visit
and presumably that's been hit by the
coronavirus yeah this has been hit very
very hard about over 70 percent of our
of our income comes from tourism so the
fact that it just went from a hundred to
zero and fits much one day mid March as
here the population very very hard and
is there a prospect that you will not go
back to normal but it will lift from
zero at some point soon well the
National Park is actually opening back
up to tourism in July however whether
people will actually want to travel or
be ready to travel is a whole different
question so hopefully gradually it will
start to recover but we don't think it's
gonna be anytime soon
great to talk to you Emma thank you very
much indeed it's Emma Ridley live with
us from Santa Cruz in the Galapagos
Islands
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