If you’re feeling seasonally affected, imagine you’re sitting on an idyllic beach in the Seychelles and can feel the waves lap gently over your toes. For this is the setting for a very exciting conservation initiative. On 7 December conservationists unloaded five giant tortoises into the sea just off Grande Barbe on the island of Silhouette and watched them wade out of the shallows and struggle up the soft sandy beach.

Before humans reached the Western Indian Ocean, there were giant tortoises on almost all islands in the region. Shortly after colonisation most of these populations disappeared completely – eaten to extinction. Only the Aldabra tortoise survives in any robust form, but two other populations – the Seychelles tortoise and the Arnold’s tortoise – cling on. Just.

Since the late 1990s, half a dozen of each of these tortoise types have been in a captive breeding programme based on Sillhouette. After some teething, the six Arnold’s tortoises began to produce. There are now more than 150 Arnold’s tortoises in captivity. This opens up the possibility of setting some of them free on the island, which could sustain some 50,000 tortoises, say the conservationists on the Seychelles Giant Tortoise Conservation Project.

The ultimate aim of the project is to establish a wild breeding population of the Arnold’s tortoise at Grande Barbe. The release of 50-100 tortoises should do. In the long term it is estimated that the site could support 500 tortoises, with further expansion into surrounding habitat.

The tortoises are expected to have a significant impact on the vegetation, reducing the dominance of creepers and grassland weeds, maintaining open pools in the marshy areas and breaking up some of the thicker woodland. It’s for these same ecological reasons that 100 baby Espanola tortoises are just about to be set free on Pinta, my native island here in the Galapagos. In my absence, Pinta has changed greatly and it’s hoped that the Espanola introduction will open up dense vegetation to light-loving species and return the island to something of its former glory.

I have mixed feelings. They are, in general, positive. After all, it makes sense to try out the sort of restorative conservation approach being tried out now in the Seychelles and shortly on Pinta. But I can’t help feeling a tinge of sadness also. The grand intentions of such initiatives are also a stark reminder of just how much we have lost and how far we have to go.

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