Posts Tagged ‘Pinta Island’

May
27

Dr.Joe’s Giant Tortoise Adventure: Last Day on Pinta

Posted by in Animal Info,Birds,Conservation,Dr Joe's Giant Tortoise Adventure,Endangered,Reptiles,Tortoise,Uncategorized

May 19, Wednesday, Pinta Island 

This morning will be our last on Pinta. I was able to climb up to the tortoise area relatively early and  spent time enjoying the scenery, watching tortoises moving through the vegetation, eating, sniffing, and looking around. I also enjoyed watching the guardaparques work as they carried tortoises up the hill, passing the tortoises to the next team at each transition point. Generally, there was no evident loss of momentum anywhere along the route. I watched a few arrive, then followed a trail of a tortoise a few hundred meters up the hill. While watching her, I heard a lot of cheering and suddenly worried that I might be missing “the arrival” of the last tortoise. I hurried back, painfully beating through vegetation that had not been opened by a tortoise yet. I got back to find my fears were for naught.  There were still a few more tortoises to arrive. The smallest tortoise came up on the back of one of the crew members from the Sierra Negra. The captain was extremely gracious in allowing his crew to help with this project. Normally the vessels used here are worked by a crew that focus entirely on the duties of maintaining the vessel. While this crew left nothing to lack with respect to their ship duties, they were also so excited about the release that they did whatever they could to participate. It was one of the crew who was able to heft the smallest tortoise (20 kg, or 44 lbs) onto his shoulder and walk the entire 4 km himself! 

The Guards gather around the last tortoise, number 39

The next tortoise was number 39! He arrived and the entire string of guardaparques were there to meet him. A lot of cheers, back slapping, hand shaking, smiles, and laughter went on for quite some time. The tortoise, oblivious to the din, sat in the grass and started to eat within about 2 minutes of hitting the ground. We then all took photos to document this historic event, and began to work our way back to shore. Along the way down I enjoyed the beauty of the habitat. The mixture of ecosystems, plant communities, and diversity of wildlife along the way. Near shore, a Galapagos hawk nest was perched in a prickly pear tree. An adult peered over the side of the nest as if to say “stay back” and others were circling in the area. Doves flew by. This is an incredibly beautiful, peaceful place. 

A Galapagos hawk surveys the activites.

Back at the beach, the people who had started the tortoises on their ascent today had done a little beach clean up. Although the Galapagos are 600 miles from the nearest land, marine debris and trash regularly washes ashore. When in these remote areas, if possible, people working for the park will do what they can to de-litter all the accessible areas. It’s a wonderful and important service. 

The afternoon was restful. The students were getting their last direct contact that they would have with people for 10 weeks. While there’s a chance that they’ll get a mid-term visit to check supplies, there are no guarantees — only if time permits.  The sea lions came back and there seemed to be more of them.  After dinner, we said our good-bye’s to the students and they got into the panga, and were dropped on the beach.  The ship pulled anchor and we headed out of harbor.  As the ship went into motion, swallow tailed gulls started following along. This is the only nocturnal species of gull in the world, and 1 of 2 gull species endemic to Galapagos. They are very likely the most beautiful gull in the world.  They are easily seen in several of the tourist visiting sites, sometimes on nests with eggs or young.  It was a wonderful treat to get to see them fly alongside the boat. I finally decided to try to capture an image using my camera on an “open” setting with flash. It seems to have worked, but the white dot is not necessarily National Geographic quality! Sleeping was pretty easy that night. The boat in motion was more stable, and everyone was exhausted from all the work on Pinta. 

We pulled into port at 6:oo a.m. Thursday morning, right on schedule. 

That might be the final day on Pinta Island, but now that Dr. Flanagan is back in Santa Cruz, there’s much to do. Come back to read the next installment. 

Written by Dr. Joe Flanagan

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May
16

Dr. Joe’s Giant Tortoise Adventure Ramps Up

Posted by in Animal Info,Conservation,Dr Joe's Giant Tortoise Adventure,Endangered,Reptiles,Tortoise

The fifth installment from our Dr. Joe Flanagan.  If you haven’t been reading along, just scroll down to his first post on May 6.

May 13, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos

I am the luckiest guy in the world!  I’ve spent the last 2 days working with 39 tortoises and have shared my time with some very professional students who will be following these animals for the next 2.5 months using radio tracking.  I’ll be able to “watch” three of the animals  from home since they’ll be wearing satellite tags. The tags are actually transmitters, whose signal is picked up by satellites and the information on their location is sent to a database where it is downloaded for access.

An example of a satellite tag

Below is the process I’ve gone through for the last 2 days:

* Each tortoise is brought from isolation pen, where all 39 animals have been kept since their sterilization surgery last November.

* The tortoise is weighed, measured, and identity is confirmed through markings and a “PIT” (passive induced transponder) tag.

* I collect a blood sample for later analysis.  My favorite site for blood collection is the jugular vein.  This is generally easy to utilize if the animal is held by someone strong enough while extracting the animal’s head from the shell, and keep it still while I locate the nice vein on either side of the neck.  I don’t get the sample on the first try every time, but most of the time I do.  Today there was one animal that WOULD NOT COOPERATE!!  So I went to my second favorite site, which is the wrist area.  That’s where it’s easiest to get blood from most animals, but it doesn’t flow as well, and can be contaminated with lymph fluid, making it less helpful in diagnosing disease.  Once captured, the blood goes into storage tubes and into an ice chest to keep it cool until analyzed.

* I administer a de-wormer to assure they aren’t harboring any “animals” we don’t want to introduce to Pinta.  This involves drawing up the correct amount of medicine for the tortoise, then teasing the blunt tipped metal tube through the front of the tortoises’  lips and advancing it into the back of their throat to administer the liquid slowly as they swallow.  This goes well most of the time, but some seem to know how to store it in the back of their throats and can then spew it out when I’ve finished!

Administering critical de-worming medicine.

* I collect a fecal sample (if they are so generous) to assess the success of our treatment.

* The tortoise is then cleaned and prepared to have one of 3 different types of electronic tags attached.  The students here with me are using an epoxy that’s been used before on turtles and tortoises.  It starts out like putty, but becomes as hard as rock and adheres well to the tortoise’s shells.  The whole process, other than the drying of the epoxy, takes about 30 minutes per animal.

Students working with Dr. Joe apply a tracking device to the tortoise's shell with epoxy.

* The tortoises then go into a holding pen where they’re fed and watered before they are carefully loaded onto ship this coming Sunday to take the voyage to Pinta Island.

I’m analyzing the blood samples with equipment loaned to the project by Abaxis. They have a pretty neat, small, and easy-to-operate machine that gives me information on the tortoise’s organ functions,  including its’ kidney, liver, muscle, and circulatory system.  The machine takes only a very small amount of blood and gives me a panel of information.  I analyze their blood for 2 reasons:  1) we want to see that the animals are healthy before they’re released, and  2) we want to see a set of data that we can use to create normal reference ranges for blood values for this species.  The numbers will be particularly important since these animals are kept within the natural range of the species.

As we work, it’s fun to look around at the coastal, arid zone of Santa Cruz Island, where the Charles Darwin Research Station and the Galapagos National Park offices are located.  There’s a cactus forest in this area, with prickly pear and organ pipe like cactus that tower up to 30′ tall or more!  There are also acacia, palo verde (just like in Texas) and many other species of trees and shrubs that remind me of home.  But it is all growing in a rough, rocky, lava covered substrate that heaves and rolls from the coast to the top peak of this island.  The lava is rough and the vegetation is thick.

A Darwin finch

I’m also enjoying watching the “Darwin’s Finches”, mockingbirds, and warblers that are very abundant.  One species, the ani (or garrapatero in Spanish), is also abundant, but unfortunately was introduced many years ago by farmers.  The name “garrapatero” means “tick eater”, so the farmers were hoping to relieve their cattle of these blood sucking parasites.  The plan didn’t work, and these birds now compete with native birds, and even can eat the young of some of the other species of birds here.  Additionally, we know they carry diseases like parasites and pox virus which are contagious to the other birds.

I hope to get done with the blood samples by 10 or 10:15 tonight.  It has been a long day and I will probably miss supper.  It will all be worth it for the important information we will be learning about these magnificent tortoises!

Written By Dr. Joe Flanagan

Thank you to eeliad.com for satellite tag photo, and to Blackwellpublishing.com for the picture of the Darwin finch.

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May
14

Dr. Joe’ Giant Tortoise Adventure: Preparations

Posted by in Animal Info,Dr Joe's Giant Tortoise Adventure,Endangered,Reptiles,Tortoise

May 10th, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

Here is a photo of “Lonesome George”, the last surviving tortoise from the Island of Pinta in Galapagos.  Handsome fella isn’t he?

Lonesome George

His island was stripped of tortoises by pirates and whalers in the 17th and 18th centuries.  This species of Galapagos tortoise was thought to be extinct until George was found in 1971.  He was transferred to the Charles Darwin Station in 1972 and is now housed with 2 female tortoises from another island in hopes that he might reproduce.  Despite many attempts, there have been no fertile eggs, and the hope of finding a female tortoise from the island of Pinta anywhere else in the world, including zoos and private collections, is very slim.

Now, the tortoises we release there next week will make a great contribution to the habitat by doing the job of a large herbivore in the ecosystem: eating vegetation, disturbing the soil, spreading seeds, and recycling nutrients.  Again, they are all sterilized to prevent breeding. Why is that important?  We don’t want these tortoises to reproduce on Pinta because we still hope that some day a pure strain of tortoises can be released there to re-populate the habitat with the most appropriate inhabitants.  If we later introduce fertile animals, we don’t want them to interbreed with the hybrid tortoises.  So for now, we have to be confident that none of the animals we transfer to Pinta at this time can breed.

This weekend we’ve spent time getting ready for our stay on Pinta Island, gathering supplies and making plans. There’s also a team of 4 biologists who’ll be staying on Pinta for 10 weeks.  Among their preparations is food shopping.  All team provisions – food, water, sundries — will be dropped off there next week, and they need to be thorough, as no additional provisions will be available to them once they land on the island!

Tomorrow morning we will start processing tortoises.  They’ll get a physical exam and a dose of de-worming agent. We’ll also collect blood to look at organ function. Finally, they’ll be given one of three different types of tracking devices in order to follow their movements through the habitat on Pinta.  I’ll write more about all that in detail tomorrow.

Written by Joe Flanagan

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May
10

Dr. Joe’s Giant Tortoise Adventure

Posted by in Conservation,Dr Joe's Giant Tortoise Adventure,Reptiles,Tortoise

As you might have read a few days ago, the Houston Zoo’s  Dr. Joe Flanagan has left for the Galapagos — specifically Pinta Island — to release 39 hybrid (but sterilized) Galapagos giant tortoises there. If you missed it, you can CLICK HERE to read all about it in the first of what will be many posts, sent from the  field over the next several weeks.  Here, we learn more about his mission and the giant tortoises.

Hybrid tortoises are the offspring of animals that were brought to the Charles Darwin Research Station (located in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos) back in the early 1960s. At that time, it was unknown which island the individual tortoises had come from as they were  formerly pets that came to them from many places throughout Ecuador.  When eggs were laid, they were hatched and reared in order to develop the needed skills in tortoise husbandry that the CDRS and Galapagos National Park (GNP) would use in restoring tortoise populations on other islands.  Breeding in this group was halted in the mid 1970s, but the CDRS and GNP were left with a fair number of large animals that would need to be fed and cared for over the next 100 years!

A man named Wacho Tapia was working on an idea that would help restore Pinta Island’s habitat, and at the same time, reduce the amount of resources they had to invest in caring for those long-living giant tortoises.  In November 2008, Wacho asked me, “Is it possible to sterilize giant tortoises?”   The answer was yes.  So last fall, I went to Galapagos with 2 great friends, and outstanding reptile surgeons, Steve Divers (University of Georgia), and Sam Rivera (Zoo Atlanta) to perform the surgeries to sterilize these 39 animals.  Steve brought along a resident, Emi Knafo, and vet student Jason Norman to help with the procedures and to take advantage of this unique learning opportunity.  We did all the surgeries in a busy week of learning and fun, staying busy with the tortoises from dawn til dusk. In the evenings we worked on our plans for the following days.  As a group, we learned a lot from each other and from the project that was beginning to evolve.

We don’t want these tortoises to reproduce on Pinta because we still hope that some day a pure strain of tortoises can be released there to re-populate the habitat with the most appropriate inhabitants.  If we later introduce fertile animals, we don’t want them to interbreed with the hybrid tortoises.  So, now we have to be confident that none of the animals we transfer to Pinta at this time can breed.  We also have to assure that they are not carrying any seed from plants that don’t belong on Pinta, and that they are free of parasites that wouldn’t be native to Pinta.  For the past 2 months, “our” tortoises have been held in isolation pens and fed a diet lacking seeds.  Their pens have been cleaned regularly to prevent the ingestion of any of the native vegetation from Santa Cruz Island.  We’ve also administered antiparasitic medication to each animal twice.  When I go down there next week, each animal will get an additional treatment to assure they are parasite free. and we can move on to the next step in the project to release them on Pinta Island.
Please check back tomorrow for another installment from Dr. Joe’s Giant Tortoise Adventure!

Written by Dr. Joe Flanagan

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May
06

Dr. Joe’s Giant Tortoise Adventure

Posted by in Conservation,Dr Joe's Giant Tortoise Adventure,Endangered,Reptiles,Tortoise

Our Houston Zoo Head Veterinarian, Dr. Joe Flanagan, is about to embark on a ground breaking journey to the Galapagos.  And he’s giving us the opportunity to essentially go “with” him as he blogs and sends back pictures  along the way.   He’s on a mission and it begins today. Read all about it:

I have had the good fortune to be able to work periodically in the Galapagos for almost 20 years.  During that time, I’ve worked with some amazing scientists, and even more amazing animals and habitats.  Next week, I leave for a project which has been in the works for a very long time.  In a nutshell, we will be releasing 39 hybrid (but sterilized) Galapagos giant tortoises onto Pinta Island in the northern part of the archipelago.

These animals will be the first tortoises to set foot on Pinta since 1972 when “Lonesome George” was taken from Pinta to the Charles Darwin Research Center in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos.  Before George was first seen in 1971, his “race” (actually now considered a species) was thought to be extinct.  George now stands as the symbol for species extinction as there has not yet been a mate found for him.

George is still in Puerto Ayora.  He’s cared for in the tortoise rearing center (Fausto Llerena Centro de Crianza) run by the Galapagos National Park,  housed with 2 females from Wolf Volcano on the nearby island of Isabela.  It was thought that these were the most closely related form of Galapagos tortoise, and there were hopes that George would mate with them, producing young that could one day re-populate his home island.  Unfortunately, despite a few clutches of eggs being found in the past few years, none have proven fertile –  and the hopes of finding a female tortoise from Pinta are getting to be more unlikely.

Pinta Island however, needs a tortoise population.  Goats had been introduced at one time resulting in thousands of goats building up, and denuding the island of native vegetation.  That very vegetation was essential for the survival of other species of native wildlife.

The Galapagos National Park was successful at removing goats from the island, finishing the job in 2003.  So now, there is no herbivore in the ecosystem and the vegetation is forming a climax scrub forest — which is the opposite.  This is almost as bad as having too many goats eating everything in sight.

To have a natural balance, there has to be a habitat engineer that eats vegetation, and moves through the environment spreading packets of seeds and fertilizer (commonly called feces).  If present, a tortoise population would help maintain a mosaic of plant communities that would support a diverse population of wildlife.  And Pinta would be just a little bit closer to being restored to the condition it was in when these islands were discovered in 1535.

Right now, I’m receiving equipment loaned to us for use in assessing the health of these animals prior to their release.  Chuck Boland (a friend and a supplier of ultrasound equipment to zoos around the country) has generously loaned us a Sonosite 180 portable (battery operated) ultrasound machine.  And Abaxis, manufacturer of blood chemistry analyzers, has loaned me equipment to assure the animals have normal organ function and are ready for the transition to the wild.

So, next week I’ll be packing everything together as I get ready to fly to Quito on the first leg of the trip to Galapagos!  I intend to report back regularly via this blog, essentially taking you with me.  So please join the tortoises and I on this great and important adventure.
Note — This post begins what promises to be a fascinating and informative read over the weeks to come.  Dr. Joe will be sending us regular installments throughout his trip. Please check back regularly!!

Written by Dr. Joe Flanagan

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