It rarely pays to draw attention to yourself

A living member of species of tortoise not seen in more than 110 years and feared to be extinct has been found in a remote part of the Galápagos island of Fernandina.

  guardian

Cool.

An adult female Chelonoidis phantasticus, also known as the Fernandina giant tortoise, was spotted on Sunday by a joint expedition of the Galápagos National Park and the US-based Galapagos Conservancy, Ecuador’s environment ministry said.

Investigators think there may be more members of the species on the island because of tracks and faeces they found. The team took the tortoise, which is probably more than 100 years old, to a breeding centre for giant tortoises on Santa Cruz Island, where it will stay in a specially designed pen.

Jesus Christ.

Sunday’s discovery was the first confirmed sighting and together with the possibility of finding more members of the species has raised the possibility of breeding.

“They will need more than one, but females may store sperm for a long time,” said Stuart Pimm, a professor of conservation ecology at Duke University. “There may be hope.”

Not if she isn't impregnated and you don't stumble upon a male. Couldn't you have put a tracking device on her and left her in place? How much more could you have learned about her and any others there might be? Even whether there are others.

How about just leaving her the fuck alone?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Not just the tortoise, for the love of Pete.

As long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle and four times larger than a honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee is not exactly inconspicuous.

But after going missing, feared extinct, for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered on the Indonesian islands of the North Moluccas.

A search team of North American and Australian biologists found a single female Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto) living inside a termites’ nest in a tree, more than two metres off the ground.

[...]

The giant bee – the female can measure nearly 4cm in length – first became known to science in 1858.

[...]

The bee was not seen again by scientists until 1981, when Adam Messer, an American entomologist, rediscovered it on three Indonesian islands.

[...]


[...]

Search teams failed to find the bee again, but the rediscovery of a sole female raises hopes that the region’s forests still harbour this species.

  Guardian

Thanks for pointing out where it is. Now it really can be hunted to extinction.

Robin Moore, a conservation biologist with Global Wildlife Conservation, which runs a programme called The Search for Lost Species, said: “We know that putting the news out about this rediscovery could seem like a big risk given the demand, but the reality is that unscrupulous collectors already know that the bee is out there.”

Perhaps suspected. But now they know for certain.

Moore said it was vital that conservationists made the Indonesian government aware of the bee and took steps to protect the species and its habitat. “By making the bee a world-famous flagship for conservation we are confident that the species has a brighter future than if we just let it quietly be collected into oblivion,” he said.

Keep telling yourself that. And I hope you turned it loose.