Ep. 05: The Galapagoats Islands

For centuries, goats in the Galápagos were a living pantry, released on islands by pirates and whalers who needed a reliable food source waiting for them when they returned. When permanent settlers arrived in the late 1800s and started releasing them by the hundreds, they became a catastrophe. By the late 20th century, 250,000 feral goats were stripping the archipelago bare—destroying the cactus forests, collapsing the soil, and pushing the giant tortoises that Charles Darwin once sat on toward extinction.What followed was one of the most ambitious conservation campaigns ever attempted: 9 years, $10.5 million, 150,000 goats killed, and a technique called the Judas Goat that turned the animals' own social instincts against them.This is the story of how the Galápagos Islands nearly lost everything, and how a tortoise named Lonesome George, a Hungarian scientist, and a team of sharpshooters in helicopters fought to bring them back.