BUT they have the funds for what they are doing in Nevada????? Time for some soup!
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Aug 25, 9:55 AM EDT
Desert
tortoise faces threat from its own refuge
By HANNAH
DREIER
Associated Press |
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LAS VEGAS (AP) -- For decades, the vulnerable
desert tortoise has led a sheltered existence.
Developers have taken pains to keep the animal
safe. It's been protected from meddlesome hikers by the threat of prison
time. And wildlife officials have set the species up on a sprawling
conservation reserve outside Las Vegas.
But the pampered desert dweller now faces a
threat from the very people who have nurtured it.
Federal funds are running
out at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center and officials plan to close
the site and euthanize hundreds of the tortoises they've been caring for
since the animals were added to the endangered species list in 1990.
"It's the lesser of two evils, but it's
still evil," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery
coordinator Roy Averill-Murray during a visit to the soon-to-be-shuttered
reserve at the southern edge of the Las Vegas Valley last week.
Biologists went about their work examining
tortoises for signs of disease as Averill-Murray walked among the reptile
pens. But the scrubby 220-acre refuge area will stop taking new animals in
the coming months. Most that arrive in the fall will simply be put down,
late-emerging victims of budget problems that came from the same housing
bubble that put a neighborhood of McMansions at the edge of the once-remote
site.
The Bureau of Land
Management has paid for the holding and research facility with fees imposed
on developers who disturb tortoise habitat on public land. As the housing
boom swept through southern Nevada in the 2000s, the tortoise budget swelled.
But when the recession hit, the housing market contracted, and the bureau and
its local government partners began struggling to meet the center's $1
million annual budget.
Housing never fully recovered, and the federal
mitigation fee that developers pay has brought in just $290,000 during the
past 11 months. Local partners, which collect their own tortoise fees, have
pulled out of the project.
"With the money going down and more and
more tortoises coming in, it never would have added up," said BLM
spokeswoman Hillerie Patton.
Back at the conservation center, a large
refrigerator labeled "carcass freezer" hummed in the desert sun as
scientists examined the facility's 1,400 inhabitants to find those hearty
enough to release into the wild. Officials expect to euthanize more than half the animals
in the coming months in preparation for closure at the end of 2014.
The desert tortoise is a survivor that has
toddled around the Southwest for 200 million years. But ecologists say the
loss of the conservation center represents a harmful blow in southern Nevada
for an animal that has held onto some unfortunate evolutionary quirks that
impede its coexistence with strip malls, new homes and solar plants.
Laws to protect the panicky plodders ban
hikers from picking them up, since the animals are likely dehydrate
themselves by voiding a year's worth of stored water when handled. When
they're moved, they nearly always attempt to trudge back to their burrows,
foiling attempts to keep them out of harm's way. They're also beset by
respiratory infections and other illnesses.
No more than 100,000 tortoises are thought to
survive in the habitat where millions once burrowed across parts of Utah,
California, Arizona and Nevada.
The animals were once so abundant that
tourists would scoop them up as souvenirs. Many quickly realized the shy
grass-eaters don't make ideal pets. (For one thing, they can live for 100
years.) And once the species was classified as threatened on the endangered
species list, people rushed to give them back.
Former pets make up the majority of the
tortoises at the conservation center, where they spend their days staring
down jackrabbits and ducking out of the sun into protective PVC piping tucked
into the rocky desert floor. Most of these animals are not suitable for
release, either infected with disease or otherwise too feeble to survive.
Averill-Murray looks as world-weary as the
animals he studies. He wants to save at least the research function of the center
and is looking for alternative funding sources.
"It's not the most desirable model to
fund recovery - on the back of tortoise habitat," he said.
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Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier
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