A community in southern Madagascar has pulled together to save thousands of critically endangered tortoises swept away from their sanctuary and left swimming for their lives in floods this month caused by a tropical cyclone.
The 12,000 radiated and spider tortoises that were housed at the Lavavolo Tortoise Center had been confiscated from illegal wildlife traffickers but faced a new and unexpected ordeal when Cyclone Dikeledi hit the southern part of the Indian Ocean island in mid-January. Flood waters a meter (3.2 feet) high engulfed the sanctuary, and the tortoises — many of them mere whippersnappers in the tortoise world at about 25-50 years old — were carried away.
