[CPEO-MEF] BIOTA: Desert tortoises and Ft. Irwin (CA)

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Slow, steady -- and under siege
Endangered tortoises airlifted from an Army base face other threats.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times
May 11, 2008

BARSTOW - 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 the edge of 
a dirt road just east of here.

Wearing rubber gloves, Drake picked up the old female California desert 
tortoise and, in one fluid motion, moved her to safer ground beneath a 
nearby creosote bush. "It's one of ours," she said. "No. 4118."

The tortoise, nicknamed "Road Warrior," was among the 760 captured and 
airlifted by helicopter a month ago out of the southern portion of the 
Army's nearby National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, which is slated for 
expanded combat exercises. Her well-being in new terrain is essential to 
the $8.7-million relocation effort, which has been hit hard by a problem 
unforeseen by federal biologists: rampant coyote attacks.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tortoise11-2008may11,0,5101478.story


--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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