Giant Galapagos Tortoise

This huge male dome shelled Galapagos tortoise lives at the highlands of Santa Cruz Island.  It was so wonderful to see them free and wild.  The Charles Darwin Science Research Station at Puerto Ayora has a large captive breeding program of the 11 subspecies of tortoise.  Highly exploited for their oil, meat and eggs during the times of the fur seal hunters, buccaneers and whalers, their numbers dwindled from 200,000 to 15,000 today.