The Rise of the Tortoise Mafia
Made homeless, buried alive, and eaten illegally in their millions, as if life as a tortoise in Madagascar wasn’t hard enough, they now face a new threat, the ‘Tortoise Mafia’. I travelled into the sacred forests of southern Madagascar to witness one plodding animals’ rapid march towards extinction.
“Tortoises make people smile” Dr. Christina Castellano explains. As part of the US conservation group, The Orianne Society, and a self-confessed tortoise nut, she has been studying them for the last 15 years. She’s hit the nail on the head; despite their wrinkled grumpy faces, tortoises take us to a happy place.
Perhaps it’s their unhurried and simple way of life; they graze, they sleep, they fornicate.
Very. Slowly.
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