Despite protection, tortoise recovery proceeds slowly
By Mike Stark | The Associated Press • Published August 26, 2008


 SALT LAKE CITY — It's been 18 years since the federal government decided to protect the shy, slow-moving Mojave desert tortoise.

 Despite that step, wildlife officials still don't know if it has done any good to stop the tortoise's widespread decline in the scrubby desertlands of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

In some places, biologists went looking for desert tortoises only to come up with empty shells, said Roy Averill-Murray, desert tortoise recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Reno, Nev.

"We know for a fact a lot of localized populations have suffered dramatic declines," Averill-Murray said. "From that, it's probably not too big a leap to think it's probably at least somewhat true across the board."

The long list of established threats — urbanization, predators, wildfire, disease, human interference and others — isn't letting up. And that says nothing of the predicted shift toward higher temperatures and less precipitation that could threaten the tortoise's food supplies.

"The biggest challenge and unanswered question is the effects of climate change," Averill-Murray said. "That is the wild card for sure."

Plan changees proposed

The agency is now proposing to tweak its plan for recovering tortoises, mainly by focusing on a more coordinated approach between dozens of state, federal and local agencies who control land where the tortoise lives. Wildlife officials are also trying to figure out better ways to monitor recovery progress.

That approach is too weak and too vague in the face of ongoing declines, according to Ileene Anderson in the Los Angeles office of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

She said the new proposed plan, released as a draft earlier this month, waters down important measures from a 1994 plan meant to reduce the effect of disruptions like grazing or off-road vehicle use.

"To me it's a plan that says they're going to do more planning," Anderson said. "There's no reason to think this is going to make any difference."



More than $100 million has been spent since 1980 when some of the tortoises in Utah were listed as threatened. In 1990, Mojave tortoises in all their ranges received that same designation under the Endangered Species Act.

 Federal officials predict it'll cost $159 million to recover the curious creatures. Desert tortoises spend up to 95 percent of their time in underground burrows, can have shells 15 inches across, bob their heads oddly during courtship and are capable of noises described as hisses, grunts and whoops.

The population ranges over millions of acres, leaving the tortoise vulnerable to wide variety of threats.

No easy solution

There's no one-size-fits-all solution for nursing the tortoise population back to health.

"I'm the recovery coordinator and it seems like a Herculean task," Averill-Murray said. "But I'm optimistic in our ability to make better progress."

Kristin Berry, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist in California, hasn't seen much sign of success so far on the 15 areas she's tracked tortoises for years.

"My study plots in California at least indicate they've continued to plummet and very seriously so," Berry said.

The 1994 plan took some much-needed steps protect tortoise habitat and curb grazing in certain key areas, she said. Other steps, like providing fencing along highways to keep tortoises out of danger and curbing predators such as ravens and coyotes, have been slower.

"There's a lot of factors that have come into play and have yet to be strongly dealt with," Berry said.

Thousands remain

Averill-Murray roughly estimates there are hundreds of thousands of desert tortoises in areas designated for recovery.

He's pinning some of his recovery hopes on teams scattered throughout the tortoise's range that can identify problems and act on them.

That could mean doing a better job of educating people about how to lessen their impact while in tortoise habitat, steps like keeping off-road vehicles on designated trails and not letting dogs run loose in places where they might snatch up a tortoise.

Elsewhere, there's the problem of cheatgrass, a nonnative species that provides fuel for fires to move quickly across the desert. Some tortoises die in the flames or starve after food sources like wildflowers and cactus burn.

Trickier issues, like an upper-respiratory disease, drought and climate change also loom.

The population has also taken a symbolic hit.

Mojave Max, the Nevada tortoise whose emergence from his burrow was seen as a harbinger of spring each year, died from natural causes in late June. His age was estimated at 65.