"Tortoises besieged in new habitat"
"by Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times | May 18, 2008
BARSTOW, Calif. - As the sun rose over the Mojave Desert, researcher Kristina Drake approached with caution as a creature with weary eyes, a scuffed carapace, and skin as rough as rhino hide peered at her from a dirt road east of here.
Wearing rubber gloves, Drake picked up the old female California desert tortoise and moved her to safer ground beneath a nearby creosote bush.
"It's one of ours," said. "Number 4118."
Nicknamed "Road Warrior," the tortoise was among the 760 captured and airlifted by helicopter a month ago out of the southern portion of the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, which is scheduled for expanded combat exercises.
And you don't think there is going to be a wider war in the Middle East or a draft?
Whatever!
Her well-being in new terrain is essential to the $8.7-million relocation effort, which has a problem unforeseen by federal biologists: coyote attacks.
"Coyotes didn't seem to be a problem when we started," said Kristin Berry, a lead US Geological Survey biologist in the project. "The question in the back of all of our minds now is this: How could we have determined that this was going to happen?"
As with anything, it is what is known as the law of UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES!!
That's why things must be PROPERLY THOUGHT THROUGH -- you know, like the occupation of Iraq.
The California tortoise, whose population has fallen to an estimated 45,000 on the public lands in the western Mojave, is protected under state and federal endangered species acts.
In 2001, Congress authorized Fort Irwin to expand into prime tortoise habitat. As mitigation, the Army agreed to move the tortoises from the expansion area onto unoccupied public lands, an effort that began in March 2008.
So far, at least 14 translocated adult tortoises and 14 resident tortoises in the area have been killed and eaten by coyotes, according to biologists monitoring survival rates of the reptiles, many of which were fitted with radio transmitters. In a related problem, 15 of 70 baby tortoises collected at the training center as part of the relocation have died of various causes, Army officials said.
The problem, they say, might be linked to severe drought, which killed off plants and triggered a crash in rodent populations.
As a result, coyotes, which normally thrive on kangaroo rats and rabbits, are turning to the lumbering Gopherus agassizii for sustenance.
In an effort to prevent further losses, the Army has requested that the predators, described by one military spokesman as a "rogue clan of coyotes," be eradicated by animal control sharpshooters.
How come man's solution to everything is to kill it?
The gunners, however, have been delayed for weeks by bureaucratic red tape, military officials said.
In the meantime, many translocated tortoises have shown a tendency to wander, sometimes for miles, often in a northward direction back toward the Army base.
Sounds to me like they are trying to GET BACK HOME!!!!
Gashes and tooth marks on the shell of a translocated tortoise found April 15 indicated that it had been ripped out of the front of its carapace.
The Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson, Ariz.-based environmental group, said it plans to file suit against the Army, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management for allegedly violating the federal Endangered Species Act in their management of desert tortoises.
Of particular concern, lawyers for the center say, was the Army's decision a month ago to move tortoises to areas where they would be vulnerable to potentially lethal threats.
The Army had been warned that numerous environmental studies expressed concern about vehicle traffic, drought-stricken foraging grounds and resident tortoises suffering from infectious respiratory disease and predation by ravens, dogs, and coyotes.
Nothing else in this world matters when we have wars to fight, haven't you heard?
"The deed is done, and now we are watching the aftermath," said Ilene Anderson, a biologist and spokeswoman for the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's a disaster. We've lost so many tortoises - the California state reptile and a species that has taken a nose dive over the past 20 years - so early on in the project."
Michael Connor, a longtime advocate of the tortoise and California science director of the Western Watersheds Project, a nonprofit conservation group, was critical of the Army's plan to wipe out suspect coyotes.
"These aren't rogue coyotes. They're just coyotes trying to make a living in the desert," Connor said. "Now they want to shoot them. Fine. But what happens if there are unforeseen implications from wiping out the region's top predator, like an explosion of rabbits and rats?"Awwww, that won't happen!!
And if it does, well, we will WORRY ABOUT THAT LATER!!
Ten-Hut!!!!
