Africa's tortoises under threat

October 23, 2007

Africa's tortoises are in peril. They belong to the spurred tortoise family, the largest continent-wide tortoise species and surpassed worldwide only by those in the Galapagos Islands and the Seychelles. Numbers in the wild are dwindling. Once they could be found from Senegal to Ethiopia but hunting and climate change have had a dramatic effect on the animals.