A team of Yale scientists hopes to use selective breeding to resurrect the Floreana and Pinta tortoise species, whose final surviving member died in June 2012. Because tortoise populations have been steadily declining for a myriad of reasons over the last 500 years, the team hopes to make strides in reversing the extinction process.
According to Weather.com, after the death of the final Pinta, named Lonesome George, scientists began examining the DNA of other tortoise species in order to find a creature directly related to George.
Because tortoises can live to be 150 years old, scientists sometimes have a difficult time keeping track of which tortoise is related to which other tortoise, necessitating the search.
Eventually, 17 tortoises were tracked down with high levels of Pinta and Floreana DNA. And while the Pinta and Floreana are extinct at this point, these new tortoises could potentially be the key to resurrecting those dead species.
The ultimate goal of this project is to bring those 17 tortoises to Santa Cruz island in the hopes that two of them are able to mate. This would begin the process of repopulating the areas with tortoises — although, as the experts point out, this isn’t a process that happens overnight.
“It will take time to restore Floreana and Pinta tortoises — maye 200 to 300 years,” Washington “Wacho” Tapia, director of the giant tortoise restoration initiative at the nonprofic Galapagos Cancervancy, said to National Geographic. “But I am absolutely convinced there are enough tortoises in captivity and in the wild to do this.”