Lonesome George

GCT's chief executive, Toni Darton, was interviewed this morning at about 6.50 am on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about Lonesome George - the world's most famous tortoise. The news broke on 22 July that another five eggs had been found in the bachelor's corral. It will be another 120 days before it is known whether or not the eggs are fertile. Listen to the interview below.

Following her Today interview, Toni was interviewed again on the BBC's World Service to a listening audience of possibly hundreds of millions.

Scientists in Galapagos who have been anxiously incubating the eggs of the world's only surviving Pinta Tortoise are hopeful that 14 of Lonesome George's eggs may be fertile.

Naturalists were initially sceptical when rangers from the Galapagos National Park on Santa Cruz Island found a clutch of eggs in the enclosure Lonesome George shares with two Espanola Tortoise females. Tortoises, like chickens, often lay eggs without any male input.

And now the rangers, who have taken care of the world's loneliest batchelor at the Charles Darwin Research Station since he was moved from Pinta Island in 1972, have found another three eggs in a nest in his enclosure.

These three, all of perfect size and weight were immediately transferred to incubators - two being coddled at a temperature of 29.5º C to hatch females and one at 28 ºC to ensure a male.

'This is such exciting news after all the years of waiting,' says Toni Darton, Chief Executive of GCT, which has been funding the tortoise breeding programme at the Research Station for many years.'

There is more good news for Lonesome George - until now the world's sole surviving Giant Galapagos Tortoise of his kind. Two weeks after one of the female tortoises sharing his corral laid nine eggs his second female companion has followed suit.

The eight eggs have been placed in an incubator alongside the three intact eggs from the first batch. It will be at least 120 days before we know whether the eggs have been fertilised.

The naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who has met George on several occasions, has advised caution over reports that eggs collected from his enclosure at the Charles Darwin Research Station might contain his heirs. Female tortoises can easily produce eggs without any intervention from a male.

However after decades of failed attempts to encourage Lonesome George to mate it is perhaps not surprising that the news has been so enthusiastically received.

Toni Darton, Chief Executive of the Galapagos Conservation Trust, said: 'Everyone who has been touched by Lonesome George's tragic tale will be keeping their fingers crossed. It's typical that you wait twenty years for any sign that George might mate and then both females lay eggs at once. We can now only wait and hope that he might have reached his sexual peak at last.'

Lonesome George may not be quite so alone after all. Geneticists have uncovered a tortoise on Isabela with clear signs of Pinta ancestry.

There were once thousands of giant tortoises roaming over the volcanic slopes of Pinta, one of the world-famous Galapagos Islands. Today there is just Lonesome George, discovered in 1972 and taken into captivity in the hope that a companion or two might turn up.

The discovery of a tortoise on Wolf Volcano on Isabela with a distinct smattering of Pinta genes gives new hope for Lonesome George as the Charles Darwin Foundation reassesses his options in the light of this new knowledge.

Geneticists have singled out this Isabela tortoise from 27 animals sampled back in 2000. Only recently have they been able to extract DNA from museum specimens collected from Pinta, a step that was needed to expose this individual's connections with Lonesome George. It is a hybrid animal - a cross between a Pinta male and an Isabela female.

Unfortunately for Lonesome George, this new tortoise is also a male. However, it could well have siblings out there, they suggest in Current Biology. There may be around 1500 animals in the region this tortoise was found, estimates the Charles Darwin Foundation, so a sampling trip could uncover other animals of Pinta ancestry.

"It will take a team of about 20 people about three to four weeks to do a first, exhaustive sampling and transmitter-tagging of the tortoises on the volcano," says Gisella Caccone, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University in Connecticut. "Then once individuals of interest are found - either hybrids with Pinta or pure Pinta animals - an equivalent field expedition will have to be mounted to find the animals and bring them in captivity." The survey alone will cost at least $30,000, she estimates, although there would be plenty of other interesting research boxes that could be ticked off during such an expedition.

"This is an extraordinary discovery that injects new hope into Lonesome George's incredible life story." says Henry Nicholls, author of Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon, which has recently been shortlisted for this year's Royal Society General Book Prize.

A successful captive breeding programme involving Lonesome George is still a very long way off. "Even if other tortoises are found, there's no guarantee they will suit George, as they will almost certainly be hybrids and not 100% Pinta animals," says Nicholls. "But if they do and breeding were successful, it would still be an immense challenge to establish a viable population of this critically endangered species."

But, he says, this is certainly the best news that Lonesome George has had in his long lifetime.