The race to save the tortoise

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Lesley Stahl: Oh, here's some.

Richard Lewis: Watch where you step and then come on over.

Lesley Stahl: Oh my word--

Richard Lewis: These are all adult males.

Lesley Stahl: Look at them. Do you know how old they are?

Richard Lewis: This could be 50 years old, 100 years old, 150, 200 years old.

Eric Goode: I mean, this is the longest-lived animal on the planet.

Their longevity is one of the reasons they're so valuable. Asian collectors believe owning one confers long life on them. The black market trade is now so lucrative that crime syndicates are involved. The center was robbed in the late 1990s in what was called one of the heists of the century.

Lesley Stahl: So people actually broke into this compound, the breeding center with all the security, and stole--

Richard Lewis: Seventy-five youngsters and two adults. They stole-- at that moment in time it was half of our-- half of the youngsters we'd ever bred.

Since then, with the help of Eric Goode, the population of plowshares here has rebounded.

Richard Lewis: This is the female enclosure.

Eric Goode: These girls are responsible for producing 300 offspring, 300 animals that you are looking at in this entire enclosure.

Very few people have ever seen them actually produce offspring, even here. But as we were just about to leave, one of the females wandered off - and to everyone's surprise -- began to dig a nest for laying eggs.

Lesley Stahl: Richard, have you ever seen this before?

Richard Lewis: No.

Lesley Stahl: You have never seen it?

Richard Lewis: Me, personally, no. It's the luck of the draw, as it were.

Being a tortoise, the work was very slow and very plodding.

Eric Goode: It's remarkable. You think those legs are just these stubby, elephantine feet, but they're very good at cupping the soil and digging this incredible little hole.

Lesley Stahl: Yeah and she could be what, 60, 70 years old?

Eric Goode: Yeah, 100 years old.

It took her almost an hour and then!

Eric Goode: Oh! There's the egg

Lesley Stahl: Oh my god.

Eric Goode: Oh my god.

Lesley Stahl: Is she going to do another one?

Eric Goode: Yup, yup! There it goes, there is goes. Number two.

Eric Goode: This is what you work for. And even more so when the little tortoise, when the hatchling comes out, it is-- you feel like you've broken a secret code.

Goode wants to emulate this kind of success back in the United States - with not just plowshares but dozens of other species. He has his own breeding center in the mountains outside of Los Angeles that he began with 150 turtles and tortoises given to him for safekeeping by the Bronx Zoo.

Eric Goode: They were trucked across the United States and they were the first guests in my tortoise hotel.