Diego the tortoise, whose rampant sex life may have single-handily saved his once-threatened species from extinction, has officially retired, Ecuador’s environment minister announced on Monday.
The playboy shell-dweller was shipped out from the Galapagos national park’s breeding program on Santa Cruz Island to the remote and uninhabited Espanola.
“We are closing an important chapter” in the management of the park, environment minister Paulo Proano Andrade tweeted. He also added that 25 tortoises along with the prolific Diego “return home after decades of breeding in captivity and saving their species from extinction.”
Espanola welcomed them “with open arms,” Andrade said.
Before the heartthrob ventured by boat to Espanola, he and the other tortoises had to undergo a quarantine period to avoid them carrying seeds from plants that are not native to the island.
Diego was transported from the San Diego Zoo to Santa Cruz Island around 50 years ago to join a breeding program with 15 other tortoises. At the time, only two males and 12 females alive in their natural habitat.
Santa Cruz park rangers credit Diego for being the patriarch of at least 40 percent of the 2,000-tortoise population.
At 100 years old and 175 pounds, he leaves the island with an estimated 800 descendants along with his unstoppable libido.