Pinta Island

Topographic map of the Galapagos Islands, with Pinta Island the most northwestern island in the group.

Pinta Island (also known as Abingdon Island, after the Earl of Abingdon) is an island located in the Galapagos Islands group, Ecuador. It has an area of 60 km² and a maximum altitude of 777 meters.^{[citation needed]}

Pinta is the original home to Lonesome George, perhaps the most famous tortoise in the Galapagos Islands. He can be visited at the Charles Darwin Research station on Santa Cruz island.

Pinta Island is also home to swallow-tailed gulls, marine iguanas, sparrow hawks, fur seals and a number of other birds and mammals.^{[citation needed]} The most northern island in the Galapagos, at one time Isla Pinta had a thriving tortoise population. The island's vegetation had been devastated for several decades by introduced feral goats, thus diminishing food supplies for the native tortoises. A prolonged effort to exterminate goats introduced to Pinta is now complete, and the vegetation of the island is starting to return to its former state.

The elongated island of Pinta is the northernmost of the active Galapagos volcanoes. Pinta is a shield volcano with numerous young cones and lava flows originating from NNW-trending fissures.

On January 28, 2008, Galapagos National Park official Victor Carrion announced the killing of 53 sea lions (13 pups, 25 youngsters, 9 males and 6 females) at Pinta, Galapagos Islands nature reserve with their heads caved in. In 2001 poachers killed 35 male sea lions.

References

• "Pinta". Global Volcanism Program, Smithsonian Institution. http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1503-07=. 

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