Since its inauguration in early 2004, with an average of 12,000 visits per year, the Cerro Colorado Galapaguera has functioned as a semi-natural habitat for turtles. The facilities were built by the Galapagos National Park with the support of the Araucaria Project of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI), with the aim of ensuring the conservation of the giant tortoise of San Cristóbal and also creating an educational and tourist recreation tool as a new milestone within the local circuit. To this end, Araucaria implemented a visitors’ room, interpretive trails and equipped the Center’s laboratories.

The new phase of the Araucaria XXI project is being financed with funds from the Biodiversity Foundation. The works to improve the laboratories, incubators that work with solar energy and acclimatization pens to continue with the semi-captive breeding of the turtles on the island. Thus contributing to its repopulation in San Cristóbal.

The results of this work are bearing fruit. Thanks to the control and monitoring work of the park rangers, 6 nests were located and in 5 of them the eggs have already hatched. La Galapaguera is home to eight more baby turtles, born naturally in the breeding and breeding center, and they join the adults brought from the island’s natural galapaguera. The birth of these baby turtles repays the effort undertaken day by day in search of the conservation and rescue of the endemic and native species of the Galapagos Islands, especially those that are at risk of disappearing.

The birth of these baby turtles repays the effort undertaken day by day in search of the conservation and rescue of the endemic and native species of the Galapagos Islands, especially those that are at risk of disappearing.