Mohave County may join tortoise coalition

A wild desert tortoise photographed during the summer of 2009 east of the Hualapai Mountains. (JC AMBERLYN/Miner)

Kim Steele
Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN - The Mohave County Board of Supervisors has been asked to consider joining forces with other counties to push for the removal of the desert tortoise from the endangered species list.

The Board recently received a letter from Steve Sisolak, a member of the Clark County Board of County Commissioners, which includes Las Vegas, seeking to gauge interest among the 12 counties affected by the desert tortoise's protected status. Those counties include three in Nevada, one in Utah, one in Arizona and seven in California.

The Board will consider Sisolak's request during a meeting at 9:30 a.m. today in the Mohave County Administration Building, 700 W. Beale St.

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service couldn't be reached for comment.

"It's been more than 20 years since the desert tortoise was listed as endangered and as far as I know, the federal government hasn't saved any," said Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson, District 3. "They keep placing restrictions on us, but they won't share any of their information. I'm all for saving the desert tortoise, but they've got to tell us something. Right now, we've got nothing that shows anything they're doing is helping them."

In his letter, Sisolak noted that Clark County has been a dedicated partner in the protection, conservation and recovery of the desert tortoise since it was added to a list of endangered species on an emergency basis in 1989 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Sisolak said Clark County has done its part to minimize and mitigate impacts from urban development on the tortoise, spending about $16 million since 2001.

"Clark County has watched patiently as the federal government has spent more than $100 million on tortoise recovery efforts but is unable to report what progress, if any, has been made towards the recovery and delisting of the desert tortoise," wrote Sisolak. "If the FWS and federal land management agencies had properly invested the $100 million available and implemented effective recovery actions since 1989, the tortoise would presumably be on the cusp of recovery."

Sisolak added the FWS suggests that in order to recover the tortoise, it has to measure stable or increasing populations for a generation of tortoises, which is about 25 years. Instead, Sisolak wrote, the FWS released a revised recovery plan in 2011 that suggests it will take another $159 million and another 25 years to recover and delist the tortoise.

With virtually no progress to report in the first 25 years, questioned Sisolak, why would anyone have confidence that after another quarter of a century and $159 million, the results would be any different? Sisolak said the FWS estimates there are 295,000 tortoises across the 26,000 mile area of the 12 counties, and based on that number, it would seem reasonable that FWS declare the desert tortoise recovered and remove it from the list of federally threatened and endangered species.

Johnson said Mohave County has been forced to make adjustments to accommodate the desert tortoise, although he wasn't sure of the financial impact of those changes over the years. Mohave County Administrator Michael Hendrix also couldn't put a price tag on how much the county has spent. Johnson said the cost for Mohave County has been much less than that of the counties in Utah, Nevada and California, which have more tortoises.

Johnson also is chairman of the Quadstate Local Government Authority, which is composed of counties from Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California. It provides a multi-county voice on federal natural resource management and public land issues primarily in the Mojave Desert region, including the desert tortoise.

Mohave County restrictions have included placing special fencing around various areas to keep the tortoises away. Also, cattle in the north end of the county were moved to keep them from stepping on the tortoises. That caused other problems, said Johnson, because the cattle ate invasive grasses there, and after their removal, those grasses overran the species eaten by the tortoises.

Also, the county is banned from doing road grading during tortoise mating and breeding season because it may endanger them. And Johnson said Mohave County has been forced to hire turtle herders from time to time to keep them off the roads.

Number of Devil's Hole pupfish increasing

The tiny fish, found only in a small, deep pool near Death Valley, has been on the brink of extinction for years

Devil's Hole pupfish.

By Bettina Boxall
Los Angeles Times

The tiny Devil's Hole pupfish, found only in a small, deep pool in the desert near Death Valley, has been teetering on the brink of extinction for years. In the spring of 2006 there were only 38 of them, down from roughly 500 in the mid-1990s.

The reasons for the decline are unclear. But government scientists trying to reverse the trend appear to be enjoying a bit of success. The autumn count of the iridescent blue fish has risen for three years, to 126 this fall, the first steady increase in more than a decade.

Convinced that the pupfish problems are tied to a shortage of nutrients, biologists took the unusual step of feeding the fish. "It was not done lightly," said Bob Williams, Nevada field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "When you start to artificially augment a wild population, it is a sign the species is really in trouble."

The high-nutrient fish food, made at a federal research lab in Montana, is based on a mix given to Rio Grande silvery minnows in a New Mexico hatchery. The Devil's Hole feeding started last fall and continued over the winter and into spring to try to maintain an adult spawning population.

Winter is the most difficult time for the pupfish, and Williams said supplemental feeding will probably be considered in the coming months.

Devil's Hole is a detached piece of nearby Death Valley National Park, just over the California border. The water-filled cavern is more than 500 feet deep, dangerous enough that, years ago, two scuba divers drowned exploring its depths.

The pupfish are an isolated colony that has survived in the hole for at least 10,000 years, a remnant of wetter times in the desert. They have been found as deep as 66 feet but forage and spawn on a rock shelf near the pool's surface.

Devil's Hole was the subject of a landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, when justices recognized its water rights and restricted nearby agricultural pumping that was lowering pool levels to levels lethal to the fish.

Federal plan would cut habitat for endangered peninsular bighorn sheep nearly by half

Scientists and environmental advocates say the reduced habitat could deal a permanent setback to a species that has shown signs of recovering after 10 years of federal protection

By Leslie Carlson
Los Angeles Times

Collared for study by the Bighorn Institute of Palm Desert, a peninsular bighorn ewe nibbles above Rancho Mirage. The peninsular bighorn sheep once ranged from Mexico to the San Jacinto Mountains.

Wildlife biologist Aimee Byard took it as a hopeful sign when she spotted 11 bighorn lambs, including a rare set of twins, nibbling encelia and ambrosia high above the multimillion-dollar homes of Rancho Mirage this spring. But as fall approaches, biologists such as Byard are growing concerned that the peninsular bighorn sheep, an endangered species, soon may lose some of the protection that has helped them survive.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working on the final details of a map that would cut by nearly half the habitat the agency had previously considered to be critical to the species' survival. The plan could be approved by the end of September.

Scientists and environmental advocates say the trimmed habitat could deal a permanent setback to a species that has shown signs of recovering after 10 years of federal protection. They accuse the Department of the Interior, which governs Fish and Wildlife, of mixing politics with science, and caving to mining and tribal interests in the desert. One mining operation in Imperial County already has applied to expand its operation into land once listed as critical to the sheep's recovery, documents show.

"The recovery plan . . . has been working," said Mark Jorgensen, supervisor of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, who has worked with peninsular bighorn sheep for 40 years. "Why take out 500,000 acres of it and say that it's not a big deal? And that it's based on science? Why not come out and say that it's just politics?"

Jane Hedron, a spokeswoman for the wildlife service, defended the new boundaries as sufficient to help the species recover.

"Critical habitat is habitat considered essential for the recovery of the endangered species," she said. "It is not intended to include the entire range of a species."

She said the decision to trim the habitat map was in "the realm of policy, not politics." The secretary of the Interior, she added, has the legal discretion to exclude critical habitat.

"If there is a really pronounced economic impact, the secretary can exclude essential habitat," she said.

The peninsular bighorn once ranged from Mexico to the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs. By 1998, however, development had drastically reduced that range and isolated some populations. As a result, the population had dropped by nearly 75% from 1974. By then, fewer than 300 sheep remained. Federal officials declared the species endangered in 1998, and three years later, biologists drew a map of the territory they believed would be needed to help the species recover.

Not everyone agreed with the biologists. In March 2005, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians filed a lawsuit against the federal government, saying that federal officials had ignored economic effects and used flawed methods to map critical habitat in 2001. They soon were joined by building organizations, mining interests and a small group of Palm Springs equestrians.

"We participated in that bighorn sheep recovery plan. We asked them not to designate tribal land as critical habitat," said Tom Davis, chief planning and development officer for the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, which owns 31,500 acres within the habitat boundaries.

"We were ignored by the committee, so we sued," Davis said.

When the Interior Department settled with the tribe in 2006, it invalidated the 2001 critical habitat and gave the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service two years to gather data and redraw it.

Advocates for the bighorn were shocked when the Fish and Wildlife Service finished its study and issued a map that cut the critical habitat by nearly half and left two populations isolated.

"I'm not happy with it. We had contiguous habitat . . . now there are three islands," said Esther Rubin, a member of the original Peninsular Bighorn Recovery Team.

Jim De Forge of the Bighorn Institute in Palm Desert said he worries that the development pressing into the former habitat will reverse the gains made by the group's captive-breeding program and other efforts to increase the bighorn population.

Bighorn sheep are easily disturbed by human activities, and are particularly susceptible to communicable diseases carried by pets and livestock. In the 1980s, De Forge said, 90% of lambs were dying from disease. From 1998 to 2001, 43% of lambs died from "urbanization," which includes automobile collisions, poisoning from ornamental plants, predation from increased coyote populations and illnesses caused by parasites that are common to residential development.

One population, known as the San Jacinto group, has only 13 ewes and is threatened by a proposed housing development called Shadowrock at the base of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.

Meanwhile, U.S. Gypsum Co. is applying for permits to expand its Imperial County operations into former critical habitat, according to the Bureau of Land Management. A final environmental impact report for the project was released in March. It included measures to restrict access to undisturbed land and to educate mine employees about avoiding sheep, and pledges to keep domestic animals and livestock away from bighorn areas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has extended the comment period on the plan to Oct. 24, 2008. Public hearings have been scheduled for Sept. 10 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Living Desert, 47-900 Portola Ave., Palm Desert.

More mountain land for endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep sought

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise


A Peninsular bighorn habitat adds more scrutiny of developments.
Mark Zaleski / The Press-Enterprise

Federal wildlife officials are proposing to expand by about 36,000 acres the amount of land they consider essential for the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep to survive in the mountains above the Coachella Valley.

Although the land was added to the latest so-called critical habitat proposal issued last October by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, environmentalists complained it is still half the land included in the agency's original 2001 decision.

Lisa Belenky, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said that large gaps remain in the hillsides where the sheep roam, potentially allowing development to cut off migration paths.

"Having the critical habitat provides a stronger set of protection for the species and to ensure that it's not just about the survival of individuals but recovery for the species as a whole," she said.

Critical habitat adds more scrutiny of large developments by federal wildlife officials and can lead to design changes to minimize impacts on an endangered species, but the designation does not ban projects.

Jane Hendron, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman, said critical habitat doesn't necessarily include a species' entire range. She said the agency refined its mapping technique and excluded areas that already are developed when it reduced by half the 2001 habitat last year to some 420,487 acres.

"We did our best in 2001 but we've come along ways in terms of mapping and how we refined our criteria for what is considered essential habitat," she said.

Peninsular bighorn sheep were protected under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1998 because of urban encroachment and disease that left the population at 290. According to 2007 documents from the wildlife agency, estimates showed the population to be 793 from the Palm Springs area to the Mexican border.

Hendron said the latest addition of 36,240 acres to the critical habitat proposal includes more alluvial fans, the sandy areas that spread at the bottom of canyons, where sheep forage and drink water. Also, she said, officials looked at old records to include land where bighorn sheep were observed 20 years ago rather than just 10 years. The added critical habitat includes sections of the eastern edge of the Santa Rosa Mountains.

Belenky said saving the habitat for the sheep helps preserve the reason many people live in the Coachella Valley with the scenic mountains as a backdrop.

"There are huge development pressures but also why people move there is for the beauty of the natural landscape," she said. "If we can't keep areas that allow the bighorn sheep alive, what are we going to have but barren hillsides?"

Sheep meetings

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has scheduled two meetings Sept. 10 to take public comment on the Peninsular bighorn sheep decision.

When: 1 to 3 p.m.; 6 to 8 p.m.
Where: The Living Desert
Address: 47-900 Portola Ave., Palm Desert
More information: www.fws.gov/Carlsbad or 760-431-9440

Desert tortoise numbers continue to decline

By MIKE STARK
Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — It's been 18 years since the federal government decided to protect the shy, slow-moving Mojave desert tortoise, and wildlife officials fear little has been accomplished.

"We know for a fact a lot of localized populations have suffered dramatic declines," said Roy Averill-Murray, desert tortoise recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "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 threats — urbanization, predators, wildfire, disease — isn't letting up. And that says nothing of the predicted shift toward higher temperatures and less precipitation that could jeopardize 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."

The agency is proposing to tweak its tortoise recovery plan, mainly by focusing on a more coordinated approach between dozens of state, federal and local agencies that control tortoise habitat.

But some environmentalists complain that the plan is too weak and too vague.

"To me it's a plan that says they're going to do more planning," said Ileene Anderson of the Center for Biological Diversity.

The agency's new proposal, unveiled earlier this month, waters down important measures from a 1994 plan that tried to protect tortoise habitat from disruptions like grazing or off-road vehicle use, she said.

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 designation under the Endangered Species Act.

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 is spread over millions of acres, leaving the tortoise vulnerable to a wide variety of threats.

Kristin Berry, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist in California, hasn't seen much success in tortoise recovery in 15 areas that she monitors.

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

Averill-Murray is 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 keeping off-road vehicles on designated trails and not letting dogs run loose in places where they might snatch up a tortoise, he said.

One of the population's strongholds has long been Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, 97 square miles of protected habitat in southern Utah. But earlier this year, a biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said the population there had fallen from 3,200 in 2000 to 1,700 last year — the lowest number since monitoring began there in 1998.

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.

Desert tortoises making slow march toward recovery

KTVN - Reno NV
Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Eighteen years since the federal government decided to protect the Mojave desert tortoise, wildlife officials still don't know if it has done any good to stop its 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.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to tweak its plan for recovering tortoises 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.

More than $100 million has been spent since 1980 when some tortoises were listed as threatened.

An endangered act

EDITORIAL
Los Angeles Times

A new proposal would let all kinds of federal agencies make decisions about what species to protect.

The Bush administration has shown extraordinary disdain for the Endangered Species Act over the years, dragging its heels on listing some species (polar bear, sage grouse, wolverine) and removing vital protections for others (gray wolf, arroyo toad, red-legged frog, spotted owl). Time after time, it has been pulled into court for flouting the law, and most of the time it has lost and been ordered to do its job.

But regard for endangered species hit a low point this week, when Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed a regulatory change that would undermine not just case-by-case decision-making but the law's basic procedures. According to the proposal, federal agencies that wanted to start a new project -- a road, say, or a dam -- could decide on their own that it wouldn't harm an imperiled species, in which case they wouldn't have to consult with the wildlife biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service who are the experts on these matters.

Other agencies not only lack such expertise, they have a built-in conflict of interest. We wouldn't think of letting an oil company decide whether a new offshore rig might harm the ocean; we wouldn't allow a pharmaceutical company to market a new medication on its say-so that the drug is safe. Why would we let the Department of Transportation build a new road through the habitat of the California gnatcatcher because its engineers claim that the project would do no harm?

Under Kempthorne's proposal, a project could be halted or scaled down only if it was "reasonably certain" to harm endangered species; currently, scientists must show that damage is "reasonably foreseeable." The proposal also would make it harder for scientists to consider the cumulative effects of various projects.

Because of a 30-day public comment period, instead of the usual 60 or 90 days, the rule could be adopted and in place before the presidential election. Though it might well be overturned by Congress, the courts or perhaps a new administration, the process would take months, giving federal agencies the chance to push through their projects. That makes this proposal a particularly cynical move, designed for expediency, not good government.

Feds look for help to save desert tortoise

Marcel Honoré
The Desert Sun







Federal conservation officials hope to partner with regional land managers, off-roaders, environmentalists and scientists in their latest efforts to protect the Mojave population of the desert tortoise.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is developing the new strategy to bring multiple parties to the table in a new draft report released earlier this week. The draft revises the agency's 1994 recovery plan for the desert tortoise.

The Mojave tortoise is found in the Coachella Valley, as well as across California, Arizona, Nevada and southwestern Utah.

New roads, landfills, fires, military operations, trash-dumping and off-roading have all taken their total on the Mojave tortoise populations in recent years.

It was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990.

The new federal effort would compliment the local Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation plan, said Katie Barrows, environmental resources director for the Coachella Valley Association of Governments.

The $1.8 billion multi-species plan aims to protect 27 species, including the desert tortoise.

“We're fortunate because we have a lot of conservation areas,” Barrows said. The multi-species plan, which awaits federal permits, would link tortoise habitats north and south of Interstate 10 via under-passes and washes, Barrows said.

Fred Wiley, executive director of the Off-Road Business Association, said he was “encouraged” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's strategy to reach a consensus among various desert stakeholders.

“I have been working on these issues for many years with different federal agencies,” Wiley said.

“You don't have (consensus), there's always a way to obstruct the process.”

U.S. seeks comment on tortoise recovery

Deseret News


The federal government wants your help to mull over strategies for recovering the threatened Mojave population of the desert tortoise by commenting on a draft version of the Revised Recovery Plan written by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A draft of the plan will be published Monday in the Federal Register, which opens a 90-day public comment period. A copy of the draft will be posted at fws.gov/nevada/desert_tortoise.

Habitat for the desert tortoise includes the Mojave and Sonoran deserts in Southern California, southern Nevada, Arizona and the southwestern tip of Utah, along with part of northern Mexico.

The main threat to the tortoise is due to human land uses, which create habitat loss and degradation by way of off-road vehicles and urbanization, livestock grazing, mining and military activities.

GAO Releases Desert Tortoise Recovery Results

$100 Million Later We Still Don't Know Anything About The Mojave Desert Tortoise

WatchDog Watch
Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE)

According to the Government Accounting Office, the federal government in the last 25 years has spent over $100,000,000 on recovery actions and research for the Mojave Desert Tortoise, a listed species under the Endangered Species Act. Despite all this time and money, GAO found that "it is still unclear what the status of the tortoise is and what effect, if any, recovery actions are having on the species...."

Winston has no reason to question GAO's facts and conclusions. He does have some other questions, though.

First, why is the federal government spending $100,000,000 on a tortoise found only in the Mojave Desert? The answer is that it's on the ESA list. That, however, doesn't answer the next question: Is it worth it?

Leaving that question unanswered, Winston wants to know why after all this time and money do we still have no idea whether the time and money have done any good? According to GAO, the answer to this question is "research has not been coordinated in a way to provide essential management information." Winston is not an expert in this area, but he suspect he could find a nice place for the tortoise to live for a lot less money and in a lot less time. Real estate is still cheap in the Mojave Desert.

By the way, this GAO report contains a list of all the reports GAO has issued with regard to the ESA. They provide good but depressing reading. Rarely has a government program with such good intentions wasted so much time and money and accomplished so little.

GAO Desert Tortoise Recovery Results Report