Lonesome George is dead. Since being discovered more than forty years ago, he has been the last of his kind, the Pinta Island tortoise. With him, his species dies. Someone on reddit made this comparison of the Wikipedia page for the Pinta Island tortoise. How did we screw George’s species over? First 19th century whalers killed off a bunch for food on their journeys, then in 1959, fishermen introduced goats to the island. The goat population exploded to over 40,000 in just a few years, and the vegetation on the island was seriously harmed. The goats have since been exterminated and a project is underway to restore the Pinta island ecosystem and reintroduce tortoises to the island, but it didn’t come soon enough to save George’s species.
