Species profile
Chelonoidis niger
Galápagos tortoise
VU · Vulnerable — Vulnerable — high risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
Galápagos tortoise (Chelonoidis niger) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Vulnerable. Galápagos giant tortoises can live well over 100 years — some individuals alive today hatched before the first powered flight. Its recorded population direction is stable, although that summary can combine local populations following different trajectories.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with terrestrial, island. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. Their shell shape tells their story: saddle-backed shells let island tortoises stretch their necks to cactus pads, while dome-shaped ones graze grass in the highlands. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
The tortoises helped name the islands: Galápagos comes from an old Spanish word for tortoise, and Darwin's observations of them fed his theory of evolution. The catalogue records 3 principal pressures for this profile: Invasive species, Historic overhunting, Tourism pressure. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Direct protection needs to combine enforcement with conflict prevention, demand reduction and local benefits that make coexistence viable. Biosecurity, health surveillance and careful management of small populations help contain risks that can spread rapidly. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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