Lonesome, a giant in every sense

LONESOME GEORGE passed away ‘peacefully’ at the Charles Darwin Research Centre in the Galapagos.

In Sept 2001, I had the pleasure of meeting the reclusive celebrity. Conversation isn’t a giant tortoise thing and we didn’t establish an enduring relationship but I feel I owe him an obituary.

The islands of the Galapagos, a thousand kilometres off the west coast of Ecuador, are the tips of undersea volcanoes. Fourteen large and innumerable small ones are spread over a sea area the size of Munster. In the primordial past, tortoises arrived in the archipelago, probably carried on driftwood from mainland South America. These plant eaters colonised the larger islands, each of which has its own unique eco-system. Over countless millennia, the tortoises evolved into distinct sub-species.