Tortoises
There are around fifty Aldabra giant tortoises on nine and a half hectares. None of them were born on the island before 1962 and none of them got there on their own. Brendon Grimshaw brought them over, one at a time, and they have been breeding ever since.
Quick answer
Around fifty Aldabra giant tortoises live on Moyenne Island. They are the second largest tortoise species on earth, they can live well past a hundred, and on a nine-and-a-half-hectare island you will not have to look hard. In the middle of the day — which is when most tours land — they are usually in the shade rather than on the paths.
How they got there
Native to Aldabra, brought here on purpose, and breeding on their own since.
Aldabra giant tortoises are native to Aldabra Atoll, about eleven hundred kilometres south-west of Mahé. They are not native to Moyenne Island, and there were none on it when Grimshaw arrived.
He brought them over gradually from the 1970s onwards, as part of the same project as the sixteen thousand trees: an island that had been stripped and abandoned being deliberately put back together. The tortoises bred, and the population is now self-sustaining.
Which is why a Moyenne Island tour is a slightly strange kind of wildlife encounter. These animals are wild, they are not fenced and nobody feeds them for the tourists — and at the same time every one of them is there because a man decided they should be.
How to actually see them
They are not hiding, but they are not queueing up either.
Most tours land in the middle of the day, which is exactly when a 200-kilogram animal wants to be under a tree.
They are the colour of the ground and they do not move much. People walk straight past them.
A feeding tortoise is surprisingly loud in dry leaves.
Rules vary by operator and these are wild animals in a national park, not a petting zoo.
They have right of way and they are not going to yield.
Obvious, and still the main reason people miss them. Several listings pass Moyenne Island without stopping.
Every tortoise on Moyenne Island is descended from animals somebody carried there by boat. So is every tree. The island is entirely a human project that now runs itself.
Who made this island→Book direct
Four listings that put you ashore where the tortoises are.
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Common questions
Around fifty Aldabra giant tortoises, on 9.9 hectares.
They are unfenced and self-sustaining, and they were all brought to the island deliberately from the 1970s onwards.
The largest Aldabra males reach around 250 kilograms. They are the second largest tortoise species in the world.
Ask your guide. Rules vary between operators, and these are wild animals in a national park.
They are there all day, but at midday they are usually in the shade rather than on the open paths.
Only the ones that land on Moyenne Island. Several listings cross the marine park without stopping ashore.
Go deeper
One man, 16,000 trees and forty years. The story behind the park.
CostFrom $83, and the park fee nobody mentions.
The parkProtected since 1973, and the first marine park in the Indian Ocean.
The verdictFourteen listings, and the four worth your day.
SnorkellingWhat you actually see, and which trips put you in the water.
Glass-bottomThe reef without swimming, from $83.
Mahé: Saint-Anne Marine Park and Moyenne Island Cruise
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