DesertBlog

Threatened Desert Tortoise

Threatened Desert Tortoise Takes Another Hit

In March in the Mojave Desert northeast of Barstow California, the US Army began removing close to 800 desert tortoises from habitat considered critical to their survival to an area south of the Ft. Irwin Military Base. The tortoises were airlifted from their homes in an area that the army says it needs to train soldiers with faster-moving tanks and other war weaponry. Conservation groups battled with the army for nearly 20 years over this 131,000-acre expansion of the base, which prior to the Federal government’s approval of the expansion, was already taking up area the size of Rhode Island in the California Desert.

The Desert Tortoise, California’s official state reptile, has inhabited the Mojave for 100s of thousands of years. It is federally and state-listed as a threatened species because in the past 15 years especially, the population throughout its southwestern range has plummeted by 90%. It has been preyed upon by ravens, foxes and skunks. Diseases, ORVs (which crush their burrows as well as run them over), invasions of non-native plants with lower nutritional value, and loss of habitat are other reasons for the tortoise’s decline.

As of this posting, coyotes, which do not usually prey on tortoises, have killed 11 of the relocated tortoises and altogether 23 tortoises have died in the move. The shells of the tortoises that have been moved all are fitted with transmitters. One unanswered question is whether the coyotes are possibly lured to the tortoises’ location by picking up the transmitted signal. Another factor in the current coyote predation is the long-term drought in the desert and the lower numbers of rabbits - the coyotes’ prime desert food.

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Desert Survivors have jointly filed an intent to sue the Army over the large-scale relocation of the tortoises in order to ensure that the new habitat is actively and adequately managed. Litigation notwithstanding, this relocation is most likely to be another devastating hit in terms of the long-term survival of this most ancient of currently living desert creatures.

For more information about this “translocation” contact Doran Sanchez of the California Desert District Office in Moreno Valley at (951) 697-5220, or Roy Averil-Murray, the desert tortoise recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Roy_Averill-Murray@fws.gov or check out the Riverside Press-Enterprise article.