Seychelles Giant Tortoise News

Seychelles Giant Tortoise Conservation Project

Patron: Sir David Attenborough

No. 26 November 2008
The Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles

We had anticipated sending out a Tortoise Newsletter in late September, but with each week that went by and none of the eggs showing signs of hatching, we decided to wait until Josephine’s second clutch was due to hatch. That time is on us now and we wonder if these eggs are also infertile.

Normally, eggs in the incubators would be expected to start hatching shortly after their 90th day with the last hatching at around 140 days. After 150 days we break the unhatched eggs to see if they had in fact been fertile, but this season we seem to have total infertility. We put the problem down to stress caused by the building operations across the track from the tortoise enclosures. This might, however not be the full story because we have heard that breeding success has been very low throughout Seychelles this year. This general low rate of fertility might have been aggravated here by the added stress caused by the builders.

The good news is that the tortoises released in December 2006 are doing well. If they have bred successfully in the wild we will probably not know until some of the offspring are large enough to be found. We hope to start releasing some of the captive bred juveniles next year. Three of those born in November 2002 now weight over 20 kilos, with a second group weighing between 15 and 20 kilos.

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