Who Was Lonesome George? The Last Pinta Island Tortoise

The discovery of Lonesome George

Pinta is a small, remote island in the north of the Galápagos. By the mid-20th century most scientists thought its tortoises were gone. Then, in November 1971, a Hungarian scientist studying snails on the island came across a single adult male tortoise.

Because no other Pinta tortoises could be found and the island’s vegetation was badly damaged, the tortoise was moved in 1972 to the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island for his own safety. There he was cared for for about 40 years by keeper Fausto Llerena, after whom the tortoise breeding center is now named.

He soon became known as Lonesome George, and later as the rarest creature in the world. Millions of visitors saw him, and he became a global symbol of extinction and of the need to protect island wildlife.

Why did the Pinta tortoises disappear?

The Pinta tortoise was one of the island forms of the Galápagos giant tortoise, with a narrow saddleback shell suited to a dry island. Its population was destroyed by people in two main stages.

First, in the 1800s whalers and other sailors collected huge numbers of Galápagos tortoises as living food stores, because the animals could survive for many months in a ship’s hold. Small, accessible islands like Pinta were hit hard.

Second, goats were released on Pinta in 1958 or soon after. Without predators, the goat population exploded and stripped much of the island’s plant cover, leaving little food or shade for any surviving tortoises. By the time George was found, his kind had effectively vanished.

Attempts to find him a mate

For decades the hope was to breed George so that at least part of his lineage could survive. Zoos and collections around the world were searched for another Pinta tortoise, and the research station offered a reward of 10,000 US dollars for a suitable mate. None was ever found.

Instead, George was housed with two females from Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island, then thought to be his closest relatives. In 2008 one of them laid eggs after mating with him, and more clutches followed in 2009, but all the eggs proved infertile. Later DNA work showed that the Pinta tortoise was more closely related to tortoises from Española and San Cristóbal, far to the south, so in 2011 two Española females were moved in with him. He died the following year without offspring.

The death of Lonesome George

On the morning of 24 June 2012 Fausto Llerena found George dead in his enclosure. A necropsy found that he had died of natural causes. Because he was found as an adult, his exact age is unknown, but he was thought to be around 100 years old, not especially old for a giant tortoise. For more on how long these animals live, see How long do turtles live?

His body was frozen and sent to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where taxidermists preserved him with advice from scientists. After being shown there, he was returned to the Galápagos in 2017 and is now displayed at the tortoise center on Santa Cruz.

With George’s death, the Pinta Island tortoise was declared extinct. It is one of three Galápagos tortoise forms lost in historical times, along with the tortoises of Floreana and Santa Fe.

Hybrids on Wolf Volcano

George may not have been quite the end of the story. In 2007 researchers reported a hybrid male on Wolf Volcano, at the northern tip of Isabela, that carried part of the Pinta lineage. A 2012 genetic study identified 17 tortoises on the volcano with partial Pinta ancestry, and more have been reported since.

How did Pinta genes get there? The most likely explanation is that sailors moved tortoises around. Ships often anchored at Banks Bay near Wolf Volcano and may have dumped or lost tortoises taken from other islands, including Pinta and Floreana. Some of those animals bred with the local tortoises.

Scientists hope that selective breeding of these hybrids could one day produce tortoises that are genetically close to the Pinta form. That would not recreate a pure Pinta tortoise, but it could restore something of George’s lineage.

Pinta Island today

Pinta itself has recovered. Goats were removed from the island by the early 2000s as part of a long eradication campaign, and native plants returned. Because an island ecosystem that evolved with tortoises works best with large grazers, sterilized adult tortoises from other islands were released on Pinta in 2010 to take over the role of the lost natives, browsing plants and spreading seeds.

The story of Lonesome George changed conservation in the Galápagos. It showed how much depends on removing introduced animals early, and it echoes the fate of other island animals wiped out by sailors and introduced mammals, such as the dodo of Mauritius, which disappeared in the 1600s long before anyone tried to save it.