In Loving Memory of Lonesome George

On June 24, 2012, Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island tortoise, was found motionless in his corral at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island. His caretaker, Fausto Llerena, who had tended to him for forty years, discovered the body. George was estimated to be over one hundred years old. With his death, an entire subspecies vanished from the Earth. George was discovered on Pinta Island in 1971 by Hungarian malacologist József Vágvölgyi, at a time when the subspecies was believed extinct. His survival was considered miraculous. He was relocated to the research station for his protection and became a global symbol of conservation. The causes of his subspecies' decline were tragically mundane: sailors and whalers harvested Galápagos tortoises by the thousands for food. Goats introduced to Pinta Island devoured the vegetation that the tortoises depended upon. By the time anyone thought to look, George was alone. Decades of efforts to find him a mate proved fruitless. Female tortoises of closely related subspecies were placed in his enclosure, and while George eventually mated, the resulting eggs were never viable. George's preserved body was sent to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, restored over two years, and returned to the Galápagos in 2017 for permanent exhibition. In recent years, researchers have identified tortoises on nearby Isabela Island carrying partial Pinta genetics, raising faint hope that selective breeding might someday resurrect something close to George's lineage. He was the rarest creature on Earth, and now he is gone. His life was a warning. Whether we heed it remains to be seen.