Tortoises Give Way To Tanks in Desert
Reptiles must be moved to allow Army training
Fort Irwin, San Bernardino County — Scientists have begun moving the Mojave Desert’s flagship species, the desert tortoise, to make room for tank training at the Army’s Fort Irwin despite protests by some conservationists.
The controversial project, billed as the largest desert tortoise move in California history, involves transferring 770 endangered reptiles from Army land to a dozen public plots overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Fort Irwin has sought to expand its 643,000-acre training site into tortoise territory for two decades. The Army said it needs an extra 131,000 acres to accommodate faster tanks and longer-range weapons used each month to train 4,000 troops.
Desert tortoises are the longest-living reptiles in the Southwest with a potential life span of 100 years and can weigh up to 15 pounds. Their population has been threatened in recent years by urbanization, disease and predators including the raven.
Weeks before the relocation, two conservation groups threatened to sue Fort Irwin. The Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors contend that the land set aside for the desert tortoises is too close to an interstate highway and is plagued with off-road vehicles and illegal dumping that would disturb the animals.
The groups served Fort Irwin with a 60-day notice of intent to sue and plan to file the lawsuit after the desert tortoises have been moved.
“There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to make the relocation site more habitable … so the animals would survive better there,” said Ileene Anderson, a staff biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Fort Irwin lawyers and federal wildlife officials determined the claims were unfounded and decided to go ahead with the $8.5 million project. The process began last weekend and will last two weeks. The tortoises, including about 67 babies, are being moved into habitats approved by the U.S. Geological Survey and other experts.
“The translocation of tortoises is a very complex process,” Fort Irwin spokesman John Wagstaffe said in a recent interview. “You have to move them gently and make sure they don’t get stressed during the move.”
About a year before the transfer, biologists tagged desert tortoises living in the proposed training expansion area with radio transmitters and took blood tests to make sure they were healthy.
Scientists have a short window to relocate the animals, which recently awakened from winter hibernation and will return to their burrows in the summer.
Last weekend, a group equipped with receivers scanned the desert for signs of the tagged tortoises, placed them in plastic containers and hauled them to their new home. They were given water and released.
Scientists will continue to monitor the relocated tortoises for signs of stress.
Research studies show relocated tortoises typically spend the first year roaming. Over time, they settle down and survive as well as tortoises that stayed put, said Roy Averill-Murray, desert tortoise recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Reno.
“We’re plopping them down in a new area that they’re not familiar with so they spend the first year or so learning their surroundings and where the good burrow sites are,” Averill-Murray said Thursday.
Averill-Murray helped plan the Fort Irwin project but is not involved in the actual move.
© 2008 Associated Press
Tank training. Yep-really need more of that.
It’s just one blasted thing after another, isn’t it? We just need to find ways to waste the planet faster. That’s why we’re here.
This truly is the Great Dark Age.
It’s hard to know which is the more endangered: the desert tortoise, or the arrogant empire fielding faster, more deadly tanks.
The various threats that our army protects us from are far less likely to kill us then they are. The nuclear testing, the germ warfare testing, the depleted uranium testing as well as random accidents as they fly and drive around the country.
Who do we have to protect us from them? I’ll bet that they are going to test depleted uranium rounds at the former home of these tortoises. That will kill people for many years to come.
From: Pentagon study says oil reliance strains military - boston.com
The Department of Defense is the largest single energy consumer in the country. The Air Force spends about $5 billion a year on fuel, mostly to support flight operations. The Navy and Army are close behind.
Total Pentagon fuel costs are probably more than $15 billion annually, which is about $100 per taxslave.
In World War II, the United States consumed about a gallon of fuel per soldier per day, according to the report. In the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, about 4 gallons of fuel per soldier was consumed per day. In 2006, the US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan burned about 16 gallons of fuel per soldier on average per day , almost twice as much as the year before.
The exponential acceleration of Pentagon fuel consumption, doubling from 2005 to 2006, tracks the exponentially escalating insanity of US elites’ policies, generally.
Energy costs have doubled since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001… Ensuring access to dwindling oil supplies also carries a big price tag. The United States, relying largely on military patrols, spends an average of $44 billion per year safeguarding oil supplies in the Persian Gulf.
So each US taxslave pays the Pentagon $100 annually for Pentagon fuel consumption plus almost $300 annually to protect gulf oil shipping. Obviously the US taxslave is like the desert tortoise - in the clutches of the Petro-Pentagon.
The desert tortoise isn’t the only critter out there that would be run over, displaced, or outright killed by tanks. There are other reptiles and amphibians, mammals, ground-nesting birds, etc. These other animals may not be endangered right now but might make the list in a few years.
I love the AP sub-heading:
Reptiles must be moved to allow Army training
Why instead is this article not about the army base being dismantled to bring these tortoises back from the brink of extinction? Oh, right, because this culture is insane, irredeemable, and can’t kill off all life (including its own members) fast enough to satisfy its insatiable greed.
Unfortunately, we are all a slave of money. As long as that is the case we may never really (like the tortoise here) have a real home. Lots of people believe we should, if we could, fly off the planet and live in outer space or another planet(to prove our vast, star trek like, intellect). I wish they would. God bless and may Jesus, Yes, Jesus, save your soul! Thank you very much.
Boy, animals can teach you so much….100 years!
We human beings have a long way to go before we understand ourselves as part of the world. This is a graphic example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxKnys7Ryw&feature=related
I am frequently accused of being too negative. So leave it to me to point out that considerable expense and effort is being made by government to move the tortoises to a safe place so that the military Industrial Complex have more space for its war games. Move and manage the legally protected reptile: isn’t that a sign of progress? Or is it just another play with the deck chairs? In this country everything noble (e.g. protectors of wildlife) and with grand, deep meaning (e.g. the ancient tortoise) is on the run as the tsumami of hideous barbarism (the contemporary USA) sweeps across the land from shining sea to shining sea.
Sandia Park, NM
I have a tortoise that can’t be rehabilitated to the wild until its forty years old. Endangered in its own habitat. It will grow to be 200lbs and live 120yrs on grass. He is smarter than you think. There is a reason we all fight for the rights of the animals. We are animals too.
The cost of doing business is the cost of getting the job done right. Monies, should not be a consideration in the world that made us.
jungleboy …,
“Monies, should not be a consideration in the world that made us.”
TRUE ENOUGH, and that’s why the topic is a consideration, issue. Otherwise, why be concerned about something that doesn’t exist? We see issue and for reason. If the reason was not founded in fact, then we’d need to get ourselves psychologically examined, but we’re based in or on facts, so …. We have a different and special (enough) situation, say.
But as long as we commit human genocide like is going on now, then I don’t know that I can be impressed at all with stories of exterminating Nature. In that case, what’s new? If we don’t stop humans genociding other humans, then I don’t believe we’ll stop any other human destructiveness.
I see no rainbows (except for occasional natural ones; very seldom).