They were dealing with difficulty
All 9,000 tortoises were safely rescued throughout the operation. Some of them did, but not all of them. A total of 1,000 of the 9000 people were killed as a result of the disease. Only 8,000 remained alive. They were, however, not in the best shape. This incident left these animals hungry and damaged for life.
No one knew how many tortoises would survive, but there was also the issue of where to put them all. After all, they didn’t want to see these tortoises suffer the same fate once again.