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

A Modest Proposal: Halting Desert Tortoise Declines by Focusing All Recovery Efforts on Disease Control and Raven Removal

David P. Hubbard, Esq.,
Lounsbery, Ferguson, Altona & Peak, LLP 613 West Valley Parkway, Suite 345, Escondido, CA 92025
Counsel for: American Sand Assoc., California Off-Road Vehicle Assoc., San Diego Off-Road Vehicle Assoc., Off-Road Business Assoc., and American Motorcycle Assoc. (Dist. 37)

In 1988, desert tortoises in the Desert Tortoise Natural Area (DTNA), Kern County, California, suffered a severe outbreak of Upper Respiratory Tract Disease (URTD), causing a large number of adult tortoises to die. As a result, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) issued an emergency rule in 1989, listing the tortoise as a threatened species. Since that time, the federal government has spent more than $100 million on efforts to "recover" the desert tortoise. Ironically, however, very little of this money has been spent on disease detection and control. Instead, most recovery resources have been directed toward closing large areas of the California desert to human use, presumably to provide untrammeled habitat for the tortoise.

Unfortunately, this approach has failed. The relevant data indicate that tortoise populations continue to decline precipitously, and that the species is spiraling toward extinction. With no comprehensive, on-the-ground effort to control URTD, infected tortoises continue to transmit the disease to naive populations. Not surprisingly, URTD has assumed epidemic proportions, and is now killing adult (i.e., sexually mature) tortoises in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, often in areas with pristine habitat (e.g., Goffs, Kern DTNA). Nevertheless, FWS and the Bureau of Land Management remain inert on the issue and persist in land use/conservation policies that not only neglect the disease problem but may perpetuate it as well.

To make matters worse, raven predation of juvenile tortoises has increased significantly over the last decade, depleting the number of tortoises that can be recruited to replace the adults afflicted with URTD. This dual pressure -- URTD in adults and raven predation of juveniles -- has had a devastating effect on tortoise reproduction. If aggressive action to arrest URTD and control raven predation is not taken immediately, all other recovery efforts will be meaningless. The tortoise will not meet, much less sustain, the "recovery lamda" of 1.0 mandated by the Desert Tortoise Recovery Plan (1994).

To halt the tortoise's slide toward extinction, disease control and raven management must become the overwhelming priorities of the recovery effort. This means that land use/conservation plans for the California Desert must be radically reoriented if the tortoise is to survive. Historically, these plans have sought to restrict human activities in the desert as a means of providing additional habitat for the tortoise. But it is now time to accept the fact that enough habitat for the tortoise has been cordoned off, and that URTD and raven predation -- not humans or habitat loss -- are the forces driving the tortoise to extinction. Therefore, land use/conservation plans should (1) focus on disease and raven control, and (2) retreat for the long-standing, failed policy of shutting people out of the desert.