Rediscovery is one of conservation’s most hopeful words. In 2019, searches brought renewed attention to Wallace’s giant bee and a living tortoise on Fernandina Island. Both had gone unrecorded for a long time, but finding an animal and confirming what it is can be separate steps.
Wallace’s giant bee
Re:wild’s account describes the 2019 rediscovery of Megachile pluto by an independent team that included photographer Clay Bolt. The enormous bee had last been documented in the wild decades earlier, in 1981.
A long gap in observations can reflect rarity and the difficulty of searching suitable habitat. It does not mean that an animal literally returned from extinction.
The tortoise whose identity needed DNA
A female giant tortoise found on Fernandina in 2019, widely known as Fernanda, raised a related identification question. A 2022 genomic study compared her DNA with the historical Fernandina specimen collected in 1906 and with other Galápagos tortoises.
The results supported their belonging to the same distinct lineage, Chelonoidis phantasticus. This concerned the Fernandina species, not the rediscovery of all Galápagos giant tortoises after a supposed collective extinction.
The two field discoveries in 2019
Clay Bolt’s bee expedition included biologist Simon Robson, who described the discovery in the 2019 report:
Amid such a well-documented global decline in insect diversity, it’s wonderful to discover that this iconic species is still hanging on.
On Fernandina, the female tortoise was found on February 17, 2019. Searchers also reported droppings and feeding marks on cacti, possible signs of other tortoises rather than confirmation of a breeding population. Wacho Tapia, then identified as director of the Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative at Galápagos Conservancy, described the personal significance of the encounter:
The conservation of Galápagos giant tortoises has been my world for 29 years, and I have been involved in many exciting events, including the discovery of a new species of tortoise. But this time, the emotion I feel is indescribable,
At that stage, Tapia also said, “Now we just need to confirm the genetic origin of this female. She is old but she is alive!” That remark belongs to the uncertainty of the 2019 discovery. The later DNA result described above supplies the subsequent answer. The original tortoise image credit was parquegalapagos; that credit does not independently establish that every tortoise photograph circulated with the story depicts Fernanda.
Why finding one animal is a beginning
A rediscovery establishes that at least one individual survived to be recorded. It does not by itself reveal a secure breeding population, remove threats or guarantee recovery. Follow-up surveys and protection determine what the hopeful first sighting can lead to.
That distinction also helps explain the rediscovery of Voeltzkow’s chameleon. For evidence of a recovery measured over time, see the western South Atlantic humpback whale study.
The original Fernandina announcement
This February 2019 post records the discovery announcement. The later genetic identification is described in the article above.
NOTICIA MUNDIAL | En la isla Fernandina - #Galápagos, la expedición liderada por @parquegalapagos y @SaveGalapagos, localizaron un espécimen (hembra adulta) de la especie de tortuga Chelonoidis Phantasticus, que se creía extinta hace más de 100 años. pic.twitter.com/51HbqWcwMG
— Marcelo Mata (@Marcelo_MataG) February 19, 2019
(This post is no longer available on X.)
More images
Original reporting, credits and background: NBC News report · IFLScience report · Galápagos Conservancy’s original rediscovery statement · Galápagos National Park image credit · Truth Theory report.
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