UCF was honored with a visit from a TIME magazine dubbed "Hero of the Planet" Thursday afternoon to discuss his turtle conservation efforts with students and professors alike.
A leading environmental conservationist, nationally-known tortoise and turtle expert, and director of the Chelonian Research Institute, a non-profit organization in nearby Oviedo, Peter Pritchard focused mainly on Galapagos turtles and "Lonesome George," the last remaining Pinta Island giant tortoise.
The presentation was a co-curricular component of the UCF General Education Program Unifying Theme, "The Environment and the Global Climate Change," the university-wide theme of "The Environment, Energy, and National/Global Security" for 2009-10, and part of this year's Global Perspectives' events.
When Pritchard first visited the Galapagos' Islands in 1970 he said that "at times there was no food available and you'd have to go fishing if you wanted to eat," but that you can now call in for pizza delivery and the population is up to 30,000.
"Growth is upon us," he said.
The theme of growth continued during the presentation's screening of the BBC's documentary "Lonesome George and the Battle of the Galapagos," in which Pritchard is featured.
"The film is a rather remarkable one because it shows these two aspects of the Galapagos, mainly the human aspects," Pritchard said.
The film poses two questions: what is going to happen with the people pressure (due to increased population) and how are we going to save the endangered species, particularly Lonesome George?
Lonesome George, considered the "loneliest creature on Earth" by the Guinness Book of World Records, was discovered in 1971 on the Pinta Island and is part of a race of giant tortoises that had thought to have been extinct.
It took four people to carry him and transport him to the national park, where he still resides.
Scientists have been trying to get George to mate with females from similar races, but have been unsuccessful.
George has become a celebrity for natives and tourists alike, showcasing the importance of conservationism for the sake of the island's tourist industry--a sort of eco-tourism which has irked some extreme conservationists--which is discussed in the film.
In Pritchard's 2003 visit, he and his research crew found 15 male skeletons and all had fallen down and had become trapped in ravines.
"You've got this phenomenon...in paleontology of extinction by masculinization and falling in potholes," Pritchard said.
The film also discusses the issues of fishing regulations, lack of self-sufficiency on the islands, their over-abundance of goats, for which the government hired New Zealand sharp-shooters to exterminate, and the new threat of maggots on Charles Darwin's well-known finches.
"People can be careless anywhere," said Malcolm Phillips, a Junior Political Science major, of the lack of environmental regulations documented in the film.
"UCF's been doing a lot of conservation and green efforts lately," he said. "Orlando and UCF are radically different from the Galapagos, though."
Despite their efforts he thinks they could all use improvement.
During the short Q&A session following the screening, Phillips posed the question of if scientists had tried cloning George to save the Pinta race.
Pritchard explained that no one has really tried and that the people of Galapagos hadn't really been as assertive with the conservation efforts as they should have been.
"Sometimes nature needs a little bit of manipulation," Phillips said. "We can't bring back anything that has been lost, but we can preserve what is still there."
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