SAVING THE Desert tortoise

Desert tortoises have lived in the deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah since the Pleistocene. In the early years of the twentieth century, they still thrived within the Southwest’s arid landscapes: As many as 1,000 tortoises per square mile once inhabited the Mojave. But by the end of the century, this population of the desert tortoise was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Livestock grazing and urban development, along with the ever-increasing use of off-road vehicles, continue to degrade the tortoise’s vanishing habitat.

Since 1997, the Center has been working to protect desert tortoises’ Mojave population. Challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s grazing practices on arid public lands, we’ve helped protect millions of acres of fragile tortoise habitat. We’ve actively sought to limit off-road vehicle use throughout the desert tortoise’s range, including appealing the opening of two illegal off-road vehicle routes in Kern County, California that would inflict catastrophic harm to the species’ Rand Mountains habitat. Thanks to a lawsuit we filed with Desert Survivors, in October 2008 Fort Irwin officials suspended a disastrous  relocation project that killed a number of the animals as part of “mitigation” for expanding the military base into tortoise habitat. And in December, we called on the Inspector General to investigate the role of political meddling in the tortoise’s badly revised draft recovery plan, requesting a re-write that actually favors the tortoise’s recovery.

In 2000, we made significant gains for the desert tortoise when, as a result of our legal efforts, the Bureau of Land Management permanently cancelled all livestock grazing on 276,125 acres of the Granite Mountains Grazing Allotment. In 2002, the Center and its allies won another landmark settlement in which 1.9 million acres of the California Desert Conservation Area were protected against livestock grazing and 18,000 acres of tortoise habitat were closed to off-road vehicle access.