In December 2021, a team of 24 scientists and park rangers spent 10 days counting giant tortoises on Pinzón Island in the Galápagos, nearly a decade after black rats had been removed from the island. According to the Galápagos Conservancy's release on the census, they estimated the island's Pinzón giant tortoise population at between 975 and 1,100 and located 156 juveniles that were all born after the rats were gone. According to the Conservancy, the number of tortoises on the island was increasing for the first time in a century. However, the Conservancy cautioned that the population was still not self-sustaining.
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