Agency Asked to Delay Adding Desert Tortoise to Endangered List

In a surprise move, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has asked the state Department of Fish and Game to postpone a decision on whether the desert tortoise should be added to the state’s list of threatened species.

The written request, which was filed late Wednesday by bureau Director Ed Hastey, would have Fish and Game authorities delay the decision for two to four years, said Fish and Game spokesman Jim St. Amant. A hearing on the proposed listing is scheduled for today by the state Fish and Game Commission in Long Beach.

Hastey sought the delay in order to give the Bureau of Land Management time to complete its own tortoise habitat studies and establish programs to protect the tortoise. In addition, Hastey said he feared that the state listing could be perceived as overly restrictive by sheep grazers and off-road vehicle enthusiasts who work and play in the vast California desert.

Delay Could Be Fatal

There were no indications on how the commission will act on the request, St. Amant said Thursday. But he said a two- to four-year delay could “effectively kill” chances of having the tortoise listed and could threaten dwindling tortoise populations in some portions of the Mojave Desert with extinction.

“I am very disappointed with the BLM,” St. Amant said. “In a sense, they are killing it. In two to four years it would be too late to do anything about the tortoise anyway.”

Bureau biologist Kristin H. Berry, a leading expert on the desert tortoise, agreed and expressed dismay over her agency’s move to quash the proposed listing.

“The state listing of the desert tortoise is absolutely essential to maintaining viable healthy populations, and to stopping severe declines of existing populations,” Berry said. “In the western Mojave Desert, we have registered declines of 30% to 70% over the past six- to seven-year periods.”

Assigning More Wardens

St. Amant said the listing, if approved, would enable Fish and Game to put more wardens in the field to prevent illegal collection and harassment of desert tortoises, which are currently protected under Fish and Game regulations. It would also mandate that proposed development schemes in tortoise habitat consider measures to protect the tortoise, St. Amantsaid.

In recent years the benign reptile, which requires grasses and other low growth for food, has been decimated by human activities ranging from shootings and commercial development of habitat to increasing off-road vehicle traffic. In addition, intrusions of people have altered the desert in ways that have contributed to a proliferation of ravens, which feed on young tortoises.

But Hastey argued that the Bureau of Land Management needs additional time to implement its own programs to protect the tortoise and its fragile desert environs, much of which is located on bureau rangelands.

“The main thing is the signal it (state listing) sends to users,” Hastey said. “Sometimes a state listing throws a damp blanket on these folks and they get pretty protective.”

But St. Amant and some environmentalists were puzzled by that concern, since a state listing would only apply to state and privately owned lands.

‘Special Interests’

In the western Mojave, 46% of the tortoise habitat is privately owned and 54% is under federal jurisdiction, bureau officials said. “It’s a crock. They are just bowing to special interests,” said Patricia Schifferle, spokeswoman for the Wilderness Society of San Francisco. “They are afraid of getting sheep grazers and off-road vehicle people angry. This is faulty reasoning and an example of the failure of the BLM’s mandate to protect public lands and wildlife.”