Climate Action Now: Reintroduced Tortoises Helped Reverse Desertification on Edge of Sahara

In 2021, scientists reintroduced 500 endangered African spurred tortoises (Centrochelys sulcata, the third-largest tortoise in the world) in Senegal, at the edge of the Sahara Desert, as part of an ongoing locally led tortoise conservation project. Now, satellite imagery reveals that the tortoises have transformed the landscape! Their deep burrows (reaching up to 15 meters long!) punched through the dried-out crust and let rainwater be stored in the soil, with green vegetation patches arising where the tortoises had dug. These ecosystem engineers directly helped reverse local desertification, a great new example of landscape-scale rewilding benefits. Read ON.