DesertBlog

Good News for Bighorn, Bad News for Tortoise

There was good news for Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep last week, as the US Fish & Wildlife Service finalized critical habitat for this population of bighorn, cousins to the desert bighorn of the southwest. The new decision on critical habitat came as a result of a lawsuit by our friends at the Center for Biological Diversity; you can read their press release about the issue here.

Let’s hope the feds make a similar wise decision with the Peninsular bighorn, and withdraw a proposal to reduce critical habitat for this sub-population of desert bighorn by more than half. (Fish & Wildife has been strangely silent on this issue since last winter — maybe they’re just waiting for the end of the Bush administration?)

The Center for Biological Diversity is also on the case of the desert tortoise, and report that a recently announced “recovery plan” for the state reptile is actually not a recovery plan at all. CBD biologist Ileene Anderson had sharp words for Fish & Wildlife’s plan: “Desert tortoise recovery requires on-the-ground action, but this plan’s focus is ‘planning to plan,’ ” said Anderson. “The current recovery plan provides a science-based roadmap to recovery. But the administration has spent the last two years rewriting and weakening the plan because it finds recovery actions to be politically inconvenient. Without an immediate course correction, the administration is effectively pushing the tortoise to extinction.” Read more about the tortoise recovery plan and the Center’s response to it here.

Top photo: Larry Hogue (That’s a desert bighorn from Arizona, not a Sierra bighorn, but you get the idea.)

Bottom photo: courtesy USGS