A community in southern Madagascar has pulled together to save thousands of critically endangered tortoises swept away from their sanctuary by floods after a tropical cyclone.
The 12,000 radiated and spider tortoises that were housed at the Lavavolo Tortoise Centre had been confiscated from illegal wildlife traffickers but faced a new and unexpected ordeal when Cyclone Dikeledi hit the southern part of the Indian Ocean island in mid-January.
Flood waters a metre (3.2ft) high engulfed the sanctuary, and the tortoises – many of them mere whippersnappers in the tortoise world at about 25-50 years old – were carried away.
Sanctuary staff, members of the community and even police officers joined together in a rescue operation, wading through the water with large containers to collect the bewildered tortoises.
Some rescuers converted damaged building structures into makeshift rafts for the tortoises to ride on as they moved around to find others.
Hery Razafimamonjiraibe, the Madagascar director for the Turtle Survival Alliance, which runs the sanctuary, said they were optimistic that they had saved more than 10,000 tortoises, although they have still to carry out an official count.
That will not be easy, he said, as tortoises can move faster than you think when they want to and rarely co-operate.
The rescuers had recovered around 700 dead tortoises so far, which Mr Razafimamonjiraibe said were trapped by rocks and debris in the floods.
“Fortunately, most of the tortoises were able to float,” Mr Razafimamonjiraibe said. “Tortoises are actually very good swimmers.”
While most of the tortoises have been returned to the sanctuary, the floods were a blow to the centre, which has lost much of its infrastructure, said the Turtle Survival Alliance.
Lavavolo Tortoise Centre underwent a major renovation in 2018 when authorities seized a group of 10,000 radiated tortoises from wildlife traffickers and needed somewhere to keep them. More confiscated tortoises arrived later.
Most of the tortoises at Lavavolo are radiated tortoises, which are native to Madagascar and the nearby islands of Reunion and Mauritius.
They generally grow to about 30 centimetres (11.8in) in length but are long-lived and can reach 100 years or more.
British explorer Captain James Cook is believed to have given a radiated tortoise to the Tongan royal family as a gift in 1777.
The tortoise reportedly died in 1966 at the age of 188.
Radiated and spider tortoises are critically endangered in Madagascar because of habitat destruction and poaching. They are eaten, but also illegally trafficked to be sold as pets because of the striking yellow and black markings on their shells, Mr Razafimamonjiraibe said.
There were once tens of millions of radiated tortoises in Madagascar, the Turtle Alliance said, but their numbers have been drastically reduced and they have disappeared from 65% of their natural habitat.
