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 a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

taxon In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural 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 nam ...

Galápagos tortoise The Galápagos tortoise or Galápagos giant tortoise (''Chelonoidis niger'') is a species of very large tortoise in the genus ''Chelonoidis'' (which also contains three smaller species from mainland South America). It comprises 15 subspecies (13 ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found 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 found elsew ...

Santa Fe Island Santa Fe Island (Spanish: ''Isla Santa Fe''), also called Barrington Island after admiral Samuel Barrington, is a small island of which lies in the centre of the Galápagos archipelago, to the south-east of Santa Cruz Island. Visitor access is ...

in the Galápagos archipelago in the

equator The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can als ...

ial eastern

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

. 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, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...

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. Population history This population was very heavily exploited by whalers in the 19th century ...

from

Española Island Española Island (Spanish: ''Isla Española'') is part of the Galápagos Islands. The English named it ''Hood Island'' after Viscount Samuel Hood. It is located in the extreme southeast of the archipelago and is considered, along with Sant ...

(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 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