The Santa Fe Island tortoise (''Chelonoidis'' ''niger'' ssp.), also known as the Santa Fe tortoise or Santa Fe giant tortoise, is an undescribed

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

taxon In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

Galápagos tortoise The Galápagos tortoise or Galápagos giant tortoise (''Chelonoidis niger'') is a very large species of tortoise in the genus ''Chelonoidis'' (which also contains three smaller species from mainland South America). The species comprises 15 subsp ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

Santa Fe Island Santa Fe Island (), also known as Barrington Island, is a small island of which lies in the middle of the Galápagos Archipelago in Ecuador. Visitor access is by a wet landing in Barrington Bay on the northeastern side of the island. Names ...

in the Galápagos archipelago in the

equator The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...

ial eastern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. Evidence for the historic existence of the tortoise comes from 19th century anecdotes of whalers and settlers removing tortoises from the island, as well as the discovery of tortoise bones there by the 1905–1906

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, that is among the largest List of natural history museums, museums of natural history in the world, housing over ...

expedition, with genetic examination of the bones indicating that they belonged to a unique taxon most closely related to ''Chelonoidis niger hoodensis'', the

Hood Island giant tortoise The Hood Island giant tortoise (''Chelonoidis niger hoodensis'') is a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise endemic to Española Island in the Galápagos Islands, Galápagos. Population history This population was very heavily exploited by whalers i ...

from

Española Island Española or Espanola Island () is the most southerly of the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, about a 10 to 12-hour trip by boat from Santa Cruz. Names ''Española'', Spanish for "Little Spain", is named for Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea ...

(formerly known as Hood Island).

Ecological restoration

Following a decision made at an international workshop on giant tortoises in 2012, a program was initiated to reestablish a tortoise population on Santa Fe, after more than 150 years without one, using the Hood Island subspecies as an ecological analogue, or substitute for the Santa Fe subspecies. Between 2015 and 2021 the Santa Fe Tortoise Project successfully introduced some 700 juvenile and 31 subadult Hood Island tortoises to Santa Fe to complete the third phase of the

ecological restoration Ecological restoration, or ecosystem restoration, is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, destroyed or transformed. It is distinct from conservation in that it attempts to retroactively repair ...

program for the island.

References

Chelonoidis Subspecies Turtles of South America Endemic reptiles of the Galápagos Islands Reptiles of Ecuador Extinct turtles Undescribed vertebrate species {{turtle-stub