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  • now take a few moments, toe 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.

  • His libido has saved his species from extinction, no less, and he's retiring.

  • Here is in the Galapagos Islands.

  • He's 100.

  • So this retirements not unreasonable.

  • And scientists estimate that he's fathered upto 900 giant tortoises, which were all alive today.

  • You heard that right?

  • 900.

  • For decades he's being 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 is being returned to where he started off on a tiny, uninhabited island called Espanola, from which he was taken in the 19 twenties.

  • 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 it.

  • Yes, I've been living and working in Galapagos for 25 years as a naturalist guide on taking groups, so visitors to the installations where they have the captive breeding program we got to see him pretty much every week for four years.

  • I think he's gonna be much miss on.

  • What kind of life can he expect on this new island?

  • Well, he had a pretty He was pretty pampered where he waas females, lots of food and years.

  • Do you know, did a great job on his new island?

  • I'm sure he had a lot more space.

  • There's plenty of food there, for the tourist is the environment.

  • Isn't that different to the one where he wasn't 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.

  • And, um, I over playing in saying that he was central to avoiding that it was a very important tortoise there where the population was almost driven to extinction.

  • There were 12 females to males from the island and then Georgia.

  • And then Diego came along and he fathered probably about 40% on his own of all the young daughters hatchlings that were brought back to Espanola.

  • 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 100 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 a little more, so he should be around there for quite a bit longer.

  • Okay, that's good to hear.

  • And just while I've got you, I'm I'm curious to know more broadly how things are on the Galapagos Islands.

  • It's Ah ah, popular place for people to visit, and presumably that's being hit by the Corona virus.

  • Yes, the Galapagos has been hit very, very hard.

  • About over 70% of our of our income comes from tourism.

  • So the fact that it just went from 100 to 0 her in pretty much one day in mid March has hit 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 any time soon.

  • Great told, um it.

  • Thank you very much.

  • Indeed.

  • It's ever really live with us from Santa Cruz in the Galapagos Islands.

now take a few moments, toe pause and look away from the most pressing stories of the day and reflect on a tortoise called Diego.

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