Find new home if you can't care for your tortoise
Our view: More slow-moving pets being abandoned due to foreclosure crisis
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.02.2008
advertisementIf you check out the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum's "Tortoise Care and Husbandry" Web page, you'll learn that tending a captive desert tortoise is no simple job.
Feed one the wrong food ！ too much lettuce, say ！ and you may soon have a sick Gopherus (Xerobates) agassizii Cooper. Build a hibernation burrow that's too large and your small tortoise may have an uncomfortable, even dangerous, winter. The list is long.
Because captive tortoises cannot be mixed with wild ones, those who live in captivity require constancy from their human caretakers.
Here's just about the worst thing that can happen to a captive desert tortoise: Its human caretaker turns it loose.
Unfortunately that's exactly what's happening all around Arizona, according to the state Game and Fish Department, which says growing numbers of captive tortoises are being released in community parks.
Why? Game and Fish points to the state's growing foreclosure crisis: Human caretakers lose their homes, and so do their tortoises.
"We cannot stress enough how detrimental it is for both the captive and wild tortoises to let a captive tortoise go free in the wild," Cristina Jones, Game and Fish's turtles project coordinator, said in a news release on Thursday. "Captive desert tortoises can transmit diseases that harm wild populations, and captive tortoises aren't prepared to find food and water in an unfamiliar area and often die."
Our idea is that humans who take in animals ！ dogs, cats, hamsters, tortoises, whatever ！ must never drop the ball.
We have written in this space in the recent past that too many University of Arizona students acquire pets and later abandon them because they cost too much to care for, or make finding a rental too difficult ！ or they simply walk away when the school year ends.
The university plans to raise students' awareness about the responsibilities of owning a pet. It's partnering with the student chapter of FAIR, the Foundation for Animals In Risk, Pima Animal Care Center and the Humane Society to distribute pet-ownership materials during orientation and to give talks in dorms at the beginning and end of the school year.
Let us speak up now on behalf of the desert tortoise.
¢ If you see one in the desert ！ and they're especially active during monsoon season ！ leave it alone.
¢ If you see one at risk, say, lumbering slowly across a road, Game and Fish says you should pick it up carefully, keeping it level with the ground, and carry it to safety in the direction it was already going. A lost tortoise is at serious risk of starvation.
¢ If you have adopted a captive desert tortoise, you have brought into your life a creature who could live as long as 100 years, with proper care. You're responsible for providing that care. If for some reason you can no longer do so, you must make sure your tortoise is moved to another good home. Contact the Desert Museum's Tortoise Adoption Program at 883-3062.
Abandoning a captive tortoise in the wild or in a park is tantamount to murder. Don't do it.