Desert Tortoises and War Games

Re “Army Seeks 331,000 Acres of Mojave; Activists Object,” Feb. 10: When the Army throws its weight around, the environment always suffers. Consider the thousands of dangerous Superfund sites that exist on abandoned military sites.

The desert is filled with unique and fragile animal populations of foxes, coyotes, many bird species and especially the endangered desert tortoise, which have evolved over thousands of years. Peaceful desert tortoises have lived on this Earth for 200 million years. In the last 50 years, humans have almost eliminated this species by negligent off-road riding, collecting and exporting. The right of these tortoises and the other animals to exist is superior to our need to plan and practice for the last war.

Why can’t the Army make do with the vast tracts of land it already controls? Leave the Mojave Desert and its inhabitants to the wind, the sun and the silence.

MARSHALL THOMPSON

SUSAN TELLEM

Co-Founders, American Tortoise

Rescue, Los Angeles

So the military wants another 331,000 acres in the Mojave. You say it is the largest land grab in the Mojave in 50 years? Aren’t we selectively forgetting some recent events? Maybe now environmentalists and others have some dim inkling of how many of us rock hunters, geologists, etc., felt when the giant land grab they sponsored (i.e., the Desert Protection Act) went through. That process, too, was sickening.

To many of us this military land grab is just another in a continuing series of moves to shut off public access with no good reason.

ED FOWLER

Claremont