Aldabra giant tortoise

07.02.2024

Aldabra giant tortoise , Daily Current Affairs , RACE IAS : Best IAS Coaching in Lucknow 

   Why in the news?

A six-year-old project to return giant tortoises to the wild in Madagascar could result in thousands of mega herbivores re-populating the island for the first time in 600 years.

About Aldabra giant tortoise:

• It is the second-largest species of land tortoise in the world, after the Galapagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra).
• It can live for 100 years and has a fascinating history.
• This tortoise evolved from the ancestors of Aldabrachelys abrupta, one of two giant tortoises that inhabited Madagascar for 15 million years.
• Four million years ago, the Aldabrachelys abrupta lineage migrated, likely via a combination of drifting with floating vegetation and assisted by their natural buoyancy and good swimming abilities, to Seychelles.
• These are endemic to the Aldabra Atoll of the Seychelles, an archipelago nation in the western Indian Ocean about 930 miles east of Africa and northeast of Madagascar.

Habitat:

• These are terrestrial and occur in a wide variety of habitats, including scrub forests, mangrove swamps, and coastal dunes and beaches, each with their respective vegetation.
• The largest populations of tortoises are found on grasslands called "platins."
• Due to prolonged periods of heavy grazing, a habitat known as “tortoise turf”, consisting of a variety of grasses, has developed in certain areas.

Conservation status

• IUCN: Vulnerable
• CITES: Appendix II

                                                                 Source: Down to earth