ARIZONA GAME AND FISH DEPARTMENT

The Arizona Game and Fish Department's actively manages desert tortoise populations through monitoring and research. The removal of tortoises from the wild has been prohibited since 1988.

The AGFD's Nongame Branch manages a Tortoise Adoption Program for legally held tortoises (Table 1). 

Since 1987 the AGFD has coordinated annual desert tortoise monitoring efforts in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Through the Heritage Fund, AGFD has supported a wide variety of internal and external research ranging from population surveys to genetic, health, and other ecological studies. 

The AGFD and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service co-chair the Arizona Interagency Desert Tortoise Team (AIDTT), which serves as a forum for discussion of desert tortoise issues, with the specific objectives of conducting and coordinating research and management efforts and exchanging information. The AIDTT has published the Management Plan for the Sonoran Desert Population of the Desert Tortoise in Arizona (1996), and Status of the Sonoran Population of the Desert Tortoise in Arizona: An Update (2000) and through AGFD offers guidelines for handling desert tortoises encountered on development projects and survey guidelines for environmental consultants to reduce potential impacts on tortoise populations (http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/desert_tortoise_aidtt.shtml).