These young tortoises are feeding at the Fausto Llerena Breeding Center. Your guide will explain how eggs laid in the wild are brought here, incubated for 120 days using hair dryers and then raised by age in protective pens for up to five years. Most are then returned to their home island. When the program started in 1970, there were only 3,000 wild tortoises in the Galápagos. Since then, the Fausto Llerena Breeding Center has repatriated over 5,500. The tortoise population on the islands is now almost 20,000. In short, these efforts have been vital to repopulating this vulnerable giant.
