Indian Village Brings Giant Tortoises Back from the Brink

Seventy-two-year-old Namgaukum remembers riding Asian giant tortoises through his village forests as a child, their two-foot shells sturdy enough to carry a five-year-old boy. By the time he turned 13, the giants had vanished.

Now, six decades later, the tortoises are coming home to Old Jalukie village in northeastern India. But this time, the community that once hunted them is their fiercest protector.

"They are like our children now," says 22-year-old Haileulungbe, proud to call himself a "Tortoise Guardian." He's one of many young villagers in Nagaland state celebrating the return of these critically endangered reptiles to their forests.

The comeback started in 2018 when the India Turtle Conservation Programme rescued 13 tortoises from local households where they were kept as pets or destined for meat markets. Partnering with the Nagaland Forest Department and Turtle Survival Alliance Foundation, they created the world's largest breeding colony for Asian giant tortoises.

That colony has grown to 114 individuals. Last August, ten juveniles took their first steps into the 370-hectare Old Jalukie Community Reserve, making history as the first tortoise reintroduction led by a community rather than government-run parks.

The key turning point came when villagers themselves donated pet tortoises for breeding and asked to help restore the species. The community that had nearly wiped them out wanted to bring them back.

Seven months after their release, all radio-tagged tortoises are thriving in the wild. They roam through dense forests of Indian chestnut and oak trees, protected by the same Zeliang tribe that once hunted them.

The Ripple Effect

The transformation runs deeper than tortoise conservation. The Forest Department now works with 15 surrounding villages on capacity building and livelihood programs, envisioning Old Jalukie as a "tortoise village" that other communities can model.

This matters beyond one village. Asian giant tortoises have lost 80% of their historic range across South and Southeast Asia over the past 135 years. Only about 250 mature individuals may survive globally in the wild.

What makes this initiative groundbreaking is proving that communities can lead conservation when given support and ownership. Local elders who've managed these forests since the 1980s now pass down protection instead of hunting traditions.

Director Shailendra Singh calls it saving a species "from the brink through community stewardship." The villagers simply call it bringing their children home.