27th Annual Meeting and Symposium of the
Desert Tortoise Council, March 22-24, 2002
Abstracts

Desert Tortoise Research at Fort Irwin, California: Overview and Importance of Research in Tortoise Recovery

James R. Spotila
School of Environmental Science, Engineering, and Policy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104

The desert tortoise continues to either decline in numbers or remain at low numbers in the Mojave Desert. In order to foster the recovery of the tortoise much more information is needed about its biology. Current and proposed research at Fort Irwin has the potential to answer many of these questions and will be critical to the recovery of the tortoise. Some of the critical questions include the following: How many desert tortoises are there? Are there sources and sinks for tortoise populations in different parts of the desert? What is the effect of climate and rainfall on tortoise population dynamics? What is the demography of the desert tortoise? Does it change in different places? What is the life history of the tortoise? How do the life history characteristics of the tortoise affect its demography? What is the role of disease in the demography of tortoise populations? Can tortoise populations be "jump started" to escape the predators in the desert such as ravens and kit foxes? Can tortoises be relocated to reestablish populations? In that context are there important genetic differences between tortoises in different parts of the Mojave Desert? The research program at Fort Irwin can help answer many of these questions while helping the Army to minimize the effect of training on tortoise populations. Studies on hatchling biology, disease, demography and life history and biophysical ecology and physiology will provide critical data to answer the above questions and to help recover the tortoise. This talk will discuss the important of the above questions and the role of these Army funded studies in answering them.