28th Annual Meeting and Symposium of the
Desert Tortoise Council, February 21-23, 2003
Abstracts

Mojave Max: The Making of a Local Icon

Christina Gibson
Desert Conservation Program, Clark County, Nevada

In 1991, the Clark County Desert Conservation Program (DCP) established a Public Information and Education (PIE) program to provide information about the terms of the Section 10(a) permit and to educate the public about conservation in the Mojave Desert. The program is administered by Clark County in coordination with a public advisory committee. Traditional advertising methods including billboards, hotlines, specialty products, brochures, and public service announcements have been used to send conservation messages to school children, desert recreation groups and the general public. The PIE program developed a tortoise cartoon character called Mojave Max to illustrate materials and speak for the program in 1995. Mojave Max is also a live tortoise at the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Red Rock National Conservation Area visitor's center.

Currently, the Mojave Max Emergence Contest is the single largest focal event sponsored by the PIE program. The contest is a broad collaboration of the Clark County School District, natural resource agencies and local celebrities. The internet-based contest asks students to guess when the real Mojave Max will emerge from his burrow each spring. The contest is announced through a media campaign and is supported by curriculum materials and classroom visits by Mojave Max and friends. The contest provides an opportunity for teachers to use current events to illustrate features of the local environment and to direct students to Internet resources for independent investigation. Mojave Max is now a locally recognized environmental icon. Like the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, seeing his shadow in the eastern United States, we intend that Mojave Max's emergence will be a celebrated harbinger of spring in the Desert Southwest. Future PIE efforts will assess program efforts and build on its successes to develop effective instruments for conservation education.