Gramma died at the San Diego Zoo in 2022, having lived 141 years in captivity. Her life—from hatched tortoise on a volcanic island to zoo resident—tells the story of what humans did to the Galápagos, and what we're trying to undo.
When Gramma hatched, tens of thousands of giant tortoises still roamed the Galápagos lava plains. But that abundance was already fading. For over a century, sailors had been loading tortoises onto ships like cargo. These animals could survive months without food or water, making them perfect provisions for long voyages. Crews grabbed them by the hundreds, then thousands. The tortoises' very resilience—the trait that let them live 140 years—became their vulnerability. No one bothered to ration the harvest because the islands seemed inexhaustible.
By the time Gramma was born, the population had collapsed from tens of thousands to a few thousand. She was one of the last of her kind in the wild.
We're a new kind of news feed.
Regular news is designed to drain you. We're a non-profit built to restore you. Every story we publish is scored for impact, progress, and hope.
Start Your News DetoxHer own path north—from the Galápagos to the Bronx Zoo, then to San Diego around 1930—was quieter than the sailors' raids, but it reflected the same assumption: that these animals existed for human purposes. At the San Diego Zoo, Gramma spent seven decades on concrete instead of lava, eating scheduled meals instead of foraging, watched by millions of visitors she never chose to see.
Yet her long captive life also marked a turning point. The zoo became a refuge. While Gramma lived out her years in San Diego, conservation programs were taking root back in the Galápagos. Researchers began breeding tortoises in captivity and reintroducing them to the islands. Today, the population has rebounded to around 15,000—still far below historical numbers, but a genuine recovery from the brink.
Gramma's 141 years spanned the worst of human impact and the beginning of repair. She witnessed the islands' near-emptying and their gradual replenishment. Her death marks the end of a living link to the pre-conservation era—but the work she inadvertently helped inspire continues. The Galápagos tortoise population is no longer vanishing. It's growing.
References
Galápagos Tortoise Conservation - IUCN Red List, 2023
The Impact of Humans on the Galápagos Islands - Nature, 2019
