“We are actually making tremendous progress in recovering this species”, said Paul Henson, state supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Oregon.
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The government no longer thinks that invasive human settlement or non-native grasses will threaten the tortoise anytime soon.
The Sonoran desert tortoise will still get federal protections since it is a “species of greatest conservation need”. Those reviews can take many months and cost developers lots of money, although environmentalists and many scientists believe they are essential for the proper functioning of the federal Endangered Species Act.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is taking public comments on the proposal to ease protections for the Columbia River population before making a final decision. The Sonoran DPS was accordingly added to the list of candidate species for future consideration. The population of adult desert tortoises is about 470,000 to 970,000 in the USA and Mexico. It was listed as a threatened species in 1990.
The USFWS have been monitoring the Sonoran Desert Tortoises for seven years, and a few months ago they concluded that the risks and threats to the tortoise are not serious enough for listing it as endangered or threatened, at least for the next 10 years. The first such list was created in 1967 as part of the ESA’s predecessor the Endangered Species Preservation Act and consisted of 14 mammals, 36 birds, 6 reptiles and amphibians, and 22 fish.
The wildlife service rejected a petition from the California-based Center for Environmental Science, Accuracy & Reliability to list the eels – which are prized in Asian cuisine – as threatened.
Taylor Jones, endangered species advocate for the WildEarth Guardians, criticized the decision, saying development and highway construction have fragmented the tortoise’s habitat.
The Sonoran Desert Tortoise (Gopherus morafkai) occupies portions of western, northwestern and southern Arizona, and the northern two-thirds of the Mexican State of Sonora. Inhofe (R-OK) and Sullivan (R-AK) grilled Dan Ashe, the director of Fish and Wildlife, over protecting the polar bear based on “speculative” modeling that the species will lose the sea ice habitat it needs to survive, even though that sea ice is already rapidly disappearing. The species lives primarily in rocky, steep slopes in various desert scrub habitats.
“As with all wildlife species in Arizona, conserving the Sonoran desert tortoise has been a priority for the Arizona Game and Fish Department and Commission”.
The desert tortoise was originally considered for protection due to threats including urban development, roads, and illegal pet trade.
The not warranted determinations (known as 12-month findings) represent compelling examples of American conservation and demonstrate that how the ESA inspires collaboration between federal and state agencies, private companies, conservation organizations and individual landowners.
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FWS has identified 11 different types of habitats these species depend upon, ranging from coastal ecosystems to mountain rainforests.
