It’s heartbreaking to see the extent to which people can go for greed. They can forget their humanity for a little money and sometimes forget to treat other creatures with love and compassion. Soary Randrianjafizanaka noticed an absolutely horrid smell coming from a building in Toliara, Madagascar. What she discovered was truly heartbreaking.
Soary works as the regional head of Madagascar’s environmental agency. When she set out with local police and colleagues to investigate the stench, she wasn’t quite prepared for what they were going to uncover. When they opened the door, it was unlike anything she had ever seen before in her entire career. There were thousands of radiated tortoises, an endangered species, crammed so badly that they barely had any space to move freely.The stench was coming from the waste of thousands of tortoises.
“You cannot imagine. It was so awful,” she said. “They had tortoises in the bathroom, in the kitchen, everywhere in the house.”
After counting all the tortoises, they discovered 9,888 live radiated tortoises. Unfortunately, 180 of them were dead. But for the remaining ones, things were finally about to turn around.Na Aina Tiana Rakotoarisoa, a vet working on the case, was heartbroken to see that 574 more tortoises succumbed to infections or injuries in the next few days. Thankfully, the rest are doing well compared to how they were before.
