4 Endangered Desert Tortoises Disappear From Nature Center

It was fast work in the world of turtles. One day, Gloria, along with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, were settling into their new home. The next morning, the quartet of desert tortoises had disappeared.

Officials at the county-run San Dimas Canyon Park and Nature Center said Wednesday they suspect foul play, and have filed a missing turtles report with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The reptiles, valued at $1,000 each, are on state and federal endangered species lists. They were donated to the center by Lydia Harper, 66, of La Verne.

Bill Lutton, ranger at the nature center, said the tortoises arrived last Thursday. Friday morning, Lutton discovered the fence around their new home had been cut and the tortoises were missing.

“I hope and pray that someone will realize that they’ve done wrong and will bring them back,” Harper said Wednesday. “I always called them my kids.”

Considering her to be next of kin, center officials would not disclose Harper’s name to reporters until they could notify her of the theft.

Harper said she had kept the tortoises--which are at least 40 years old--in her back yard for the last five years, after adopting them from a friend who had moved into a smaller house. She decided to give them to the nature center so more people could admire them.

“One of the reasons she donated them to us was because she knew she could come and visit them any time,” Lutton said. “She was very attached to them.”

Lutton, at Harper’s request, took a “family portrait” of the tortoises with Harper and her husband before taking the reptiles to the center Thursday.

“These tortoises were part of the family,” Lutton said. “She (Harper) really loved them, but she was glad to give them to a place where young people could enjoy them and learn about them.”

Jim St. Amant, head of the state Department of Fish and Game’s Desert Tortoises Management Team, said many people keep the tortoises as pets, which is legal with a permit. But there are those who use their shells for jewelry and some who make soup out of their meat. Such activities are illegal, he said.

In the past year, more than 50% of the tortoise population in the deserts around Southern California has died off, largely because of a respiratory disease, St. Amant said.

The largest of the missing tortoises has a 12-inch-long shell, Lutton said. That’s 2 1/2 inches short of the world’s largest of the species, according to St. Amant.

San Dimas Nature Center officials urge anyone who has seen the tortoises to return them to the center.