California’s Mojave desert tortoises move toward extinction. Why saving them is so hard
As desert tortoise populations continue to plummet in California, a few conservationists are still fighting back.
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As desert tortoise populations continue to plummet in California, a few conservationists are still fighting back.
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Over the past decade, the California Desert Research Center, a nonprofit founded in 1980, reported a remarkable decline in the number of desert tortoises — the largest reptiles in the world — living in its native lands.
In 2012, the center counted just 18 desert tortoises. By 2016, only 6 individuals were found.
Those numbers have only continued to plumb the depths of extinction in the Western Mojave Desert. According to the center, that was the best year on record for the state’s tortoise population, but they estimate that there were only 23 individuals in 2017 and 22 individuals in 2018.
The main cause is a lack of protection for habitat, mainly because of a decline in the number of tortoises living in California’s national forests. The center’s website states that protecting tortoise habitat “is critical to the survival of at least one species,” the desert tortoise.
“This is the last refuge they’ve got,” said Michael J. Greshko, who works with the center as a senior fellow.
After decades of lobbying and fund-raising, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved the first protection for the tortoise in 1994.
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“We felt it would be the first step in the right direction,” Greshko said.
The new protection means the center will lose the funding they need to keep monitoring tortoise populations. They’ve now moved into a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service’s California Desert Conservation Partnership, which is dedicated to encouraging people to care for desert tortoise habitat.
The partnership, Greshko said, gives the center “the ability to be much more collaborative, more flexible and more adaptable to this changing landscape.”
The center is one of a growing number of organizations in the Western Mojave Desert aimed at protecting the desert tortoise from extinction. One of
