Tortoises Saved from the Brink

On the famous Galápagos Islands, scientists are engineering a miraculous return to a “pre-human” balanced ecosystem. Already, they have successfully salvaged a teetering population of giant tortoises on the island of Española, a southern island in the chain. The species, famous for helping Charles Darwin crystallize his theories of evolution, has rebounded to a population of about 1,500 after reaching a precarious low of just 15 specimens in the 1970s. “We can say with certainty that the ecological integrity of Española is being re-established,” a leader of the conservation project boasted. The success of the project has raised hopes of re-creating the effort on other parts of the archipelago, and wardens of the park authority noted that albatross, cactus, and woody vegetation had also bounced back.