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Army's transfer of Mojave Desert tortoises tripped up by coyote09:36 PM PDT on Wednesday, April 16, 2008By JENNIFER BOWLESThe Press-Enterprise Coyotes have killed at least 11 desert tortoises recently moved to make way for Army tank training exercises north of Barstow. The problem coyotes, thought to be attacking tortoises because the drought has left fewer rabbits in its wake, will be tracked and possibly killed by a federal agency to help protect the tortoises -- a species threatened with extinction All together, 23 tortoises have been killed since the large-scale relocation of more than 700 reptiles began in March south of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, said John Wagstaffe, an Army spokesman. Story continues below AP Photo Of 700 desert tortoises included in an Army relocation project north of Barstow, at least 23 have been killed by what authorities believe were coyotes desperate for food. The coyotes will be tracked and possibly killed to protect the tortoises, authorities say. Some of the tortoises were already living in the relocation area. Roy Averill-Murray, who is the desert tortoises recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said three tortoises survived attacks. Two tortoises had one of their legs chewed off, and one of the reptiles required treatment after being found flipped over on its shell for three days in a row, Averill-Murray said. Dr. Leonard Sigdestad at Loma Linda Animal Hospital in San Bernardino operated on two of the tortoises last week and amputated one maggot-infested leg from each of them. He released them back to the federal biologists who are monitoring the tortoises in the wild. Kristin Berry, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S Geological Survey, took one of the tortoises to her Riverside home to care for it. She said it can barely walk but she hopes it can one day be returned to the wild. Out by Fort Irwin, biologists have been tracking the relocated tortoises with transmitters glued to their shells on a daily basis and found the ones that died, Wagstaffe said. The Army started moving the tortoises in late March from the southern boundary of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin as part of an $8.5 million effort to deal with the threatened species while expanding its training grounds into the land considered critical for the tortoises. The move capped a 20-year battle between the military and environmentalists. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management oversees much of the land selected for relocating the displaces tortoises. BLM officials a few days ago discussed strategies with other federal and state agencies on how to solve the coyote problem, said Doran Sanchez, acting associate manager of the agency's California desert district. Attacks by coyotes on tortoises are rare, said Averill-Murray. He said that with the drought in the Mojave Desert over the past few years, coyotes outnumber rabbits, their typical food source, "The coyotes are just desperate and the tortoises are a tough food item to eat with that big shell," he said. "Rabbits would be easier, but when there aren't many rabbits, then tortoises seem to be their next choice." Berry, with the USGS, said short-lived animals like rabbits don't bounce back quickly from drought. She said coyotes recently have killed tortoises in other study plots in California and Nevada but it is infrequent. This spring, she said, presented a good time to relocate the reptiles from Fort Irwin because of the abundance of wildflowers, their main food source. "We hoped with the flush of wildflowers we might be seeing some ground squirrels and other rodents the coyotes could eat," she said. "You can take it into account but we can't control every aspect of nature, if any." The wildlife service division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the same agency that plans to shoot ravens found preying on young tortoises in other parts of the Mojave Desert, will help the Army remove the coyotes in three, one-square-mile plots where many of the dead reptiles were found. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concurred with the Army's plans to shoot or use traps and decoy dogs to capture the coyotes. The job of decoy dogs "is to respond to coyotes calls and lure the coyote within shooting range," according to an April 15 letter to the Army by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Averill-Murray said it will be up to the crews in the field to determine whether to shoot the coyotes. He said he was unsure if they could be relocated. "The plan is just to keep this as targeted and as limited as possible to alleviate the pressure. It's not widespread," he said. He added that there's no evidence of major preying throughout the habitat where the tortoises were moved. Two environmental groups have threatened to sue the Army over the large-scale relocation of the tortoises, and they plan to go ahead with the lawsuit to ensure the new habitat is managed actively, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Anderson agreed with Averill-Murray that the drought has caused an imbalance in the ecosystem. But she said that's no excuse for putting the tortoises in harm's way. "While we're devastated, we're not shocked this is happening," she said. "You're putting these animals out there and if they're the only thing moving, they're going to be a target for predators." Wagstaffe said the move was done to the best of the Army's ability with the help of federal and state biologists, and the tortoises will continue to be closely monitored. "Part of the beauty of doing a detailed study is we're going to learn a lot of stuff," he said. "And we'll find some things that we did very well and some that didn't go well."
Environmentalists sue over tortoise removalJoe Nelson, Staff WriterArticle Created: 07/06/2008 11:38:53 PM PDTTwo environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit against the Army and the Bureau of Land Management alleging that proper environmental studies were not conducted before nearly 800 desert tortoises were relocated for Fort Irwin's expansion.The Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors, which filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, allege the federally endangered tortoises were moved to inferior habitat that included numerous roads and pockets of diseased tortoises. They also allege that illegal off-roading and dumping occurs at the site east of the Calico Mountains and south of Coyote Lake."It's time to overhaul Fort Irwin's disastrous tortoise relocation program," said Ileene Anderson, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, in a news release. "Though we can't stop the fort's expansion, we can ensure that the relocation of these rare animals is done right."The National Training Center and Fort Irwin initiated the tortoise relocation efforts in order to expand its borders to train soldiers being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress authorized the expansion in 2001, and the Army has spent more than $8.5 million on research and relocation of the tortoises.Twenty-three tortoises were killed by coyotes in the month following their relocation, and 11 other tortoises native to the area also were killed by predators.Army spokesman John Wagstaffe said every effort has beenAdvertisementmade to make the relocation of the tortoises as successful as possible. He said two of the world's leading biologists in tortoise studies, Kristin Berry and Bill Borman, have been assisting in the relocation efforts.But Anderson said in her news release that relocating healthy tortoises to habitat occupied by diseased tortoises was a "recipe for disaster."She said the relocation plan could be improved by reducing the number of tortoises being moved, making sure only healthy tortoises are moved into healthy populations and improving the habitat quality in the relocation area by making it a tortoise preserve.Despite tortoise mortality, Wagstaffe believes the Army did its share of due diligence in the relocation process."We do feel, as we have felt all along, that we've done a very good job," Wagstaffe said.Whenever diseased tortoises were located on plots during the relocation, they were removed and put in a pen at Fort Irwin for monitoring, he said."I'm not saying we found every diseased tortoise, but we hope that, in our survey of these plots, that we found all the diseased tortoises and removed them," Wagstaffe said. "I'm very proud of what we've done in this particular case. Nobody's perfect, but I think we've made every effort to make this translocation as successful as any translocation in the history of Southern California."
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