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

Desert Tortoise Management in Arizona

Roy C. Averill-Murray¹, Ted Cordery², and Allen Taylor^3
1Arizona Game and Fish Department, 2221 W Greenway Road, Phoenix, AZ 85023
²Bureau of Land Management, Arizona State Office, 222 North Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85004
³U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ecological Services, 320 N Beaver Street, Flagstaff, AZ 86001

The listed Mojave population of the desert tortoise occurs in Arizona only in the extreme northwest corner of the State north of the Colorado River, a relatively small area within the Northeast Mojave Recovery Unit. The Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) continues to work closely with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor the population status of tortoises within this region through both plot monitoring and distance sampling. Habitat management is covered primarily by BLM's Arizona Strip Resource Management Plan, which was prepared to implement the Mojave population's recovery plan. Additional management actions are needed to address threats related to highway mortality and disease.

In the Sonoran Desert, AGFD and many cooperators continue to monitor population trends and conduct research on the ecology of this population to provide information to better manage the Sonoran tortoise and preclude the need to list under the Endangered Species Act. This research also provides comparative data that may contribute to recovery and management actions for the Mojave population. Members of the Arizona Interagency Desert Tortoise Team are beginning development of a State Conservation Agreement to further ensure the status of the Sonoran population.