Imagine a giant tortoise making its way through dense woods, defended by barbed wire-like blackberry bushes. Wildlife biologist Stephen Blake and his team have been studying the movements of Western Santa Cruz tortoises since 2009. They discovered that these tortoises embark on weeks-long migrations to the highlands of Santa Cruz Island, as much as 400 meters above sea level over two to four weeks, and back. These traveling tortoises tend to be large and potentially vulnerable to food shortages. They follow the green, just like Serengeti wildebeest or Canadian elk. Blake noticed that the reptile’s migration corridors appeared to line up with gaps in the highly invasive Spanish cedars that were visible in satellite images on Google Earth. The next logical question: Were the forests a problem for the critically-endangered tortoises?
2024-03-01 07:00:00
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