After a grueling journey by air and road, several dozen endangered African tortoises poked their heads out of their shells in a daze for a glimpse of their ancestral homeland.
Forty-six captive-born and bred tortoises in Monaco have been brought to Senegal as a first step toward returning to the wild.
They are African spurred tortoises, a species that inhabits the southern edge of the Sahara.
Known by the Latin name of Centrochelys sulcata, they are the third largest species of tortoise in the world.
Some captive tortoises can weigh almost 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and live up to a century.
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Listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the species is under pressure from trafficking and overgrazing.
There are “at most” 150 African spurred tortoises currently living in the wild in Senegal, said Tomas Diagne, director of the African Chelonian Institute (ACI), a conservation group.
The future of the African tortoise
Within 30 years, they could be extinct, leaving only specimens living as pets or in private hatcheries, he said.
“If I were a turtle, I wouldn’t want to live or be born in West Africa, or Africa, period,” he said.
The 46 turtles that made the journey from Monaco’s Oceanographic Museum to the Noflaye Turtle Village, about 35 kilometers (20 miles) from Senegal’s capital Dakar, are all young, the oldest just eight years old.
His parents, six tortoises who stayed in Monaco, were a gift to Prince Albert II in 2011 from former Senegalese president Amadou Toumani Toure.
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After quarantine, the young tortoises will “learn the ABC’s” of life in the wild for a few months, Diagne said after their arrival on Tuesday.
Once they have mastered survival skills such as finding their own food and digging a burrow. They will then be transferred to a nature reserve to the northwest.
Initially, they will live in a fenced area for their protection. Later, the fence will be removed and they will be alone.
“Wildlife always leaves Africa, it is always exported,” Diagne said. “It’s very rare that he comes back.”
© Agence France-Presse
