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With a little help, desert turtles are blooming at Twentynine Palms
From mid-May to mid-September, high temperatures in the sunny desert town of Twentynine Palms rarely dip below 90 degrees. The city is located in the Mojave Desert about 220 miles east of Los Angeles and is the gateway to Joshua Tree National Park.
This is the area where the Marine Corps, known for its toughness, has established its Air and Ground Task Force Training Command and Air Force Combat Center.
Around the base, the rumbling of tanks, the explosion of live ammunition, and the sparse desert environment paint a general picture.
But even within a seemingly hostile environment, there is kindness.
This happens every day when a vulnerable newborn desert tortoise senses the footsteps of conservationist Brian Hennen and emerges from its burrow.
He throws them a handful of bok choy and snap peas. This food helps the desert dweller grow from its current height (about the size of a deck of cards and an easy target for predators) to a full-grown, sturdy adult.
This is a turtle boot camp, helping turtles survive and ultimately thrive in habitats that would otherwise be permanently compromised.
save the turtle
My colleague Alex Wigglesworth detailed this survival story from a Marine Corps base, turtle research and captive breeding site.
Turtles live in protected habitats surrounded by barbed wire and covered with netting.
This equipment is designed to protect them from crows, coyotes, other predators, and other harm that Marine Corps bases can cause.
Some refer to the site as Tortoise Gitmo, after the U.S. Navy Guantanamo Bay base and prisoner of war camp in Cuba.
Officially, the facility is called the Tortoise Research and Aquarium, and since its establishment in 2005, it has been used by scientists to learn how to protect species threatened by human encroachment, disease, and climate change. It has been helpful.
What is happening on the ground?
Initially, biologists collected eggs from wild females and raised the hatchlings until they were strong enough to withstand predators and drought. This was a process known as “head starting.”
The facility received an influx of new tenants in 2017 when the military relocated the turtles to make way for a controversial expansion of the base’s training range. Biologists decided to start early with about 550 young turtles collected from the expanded area.
Then, a few years ago, Hennen’s team began collecting eggs from relocated adult turtles, incubating them, hatching them, and studying whether they were breeding with their new neighbors. Rather than release the hatchlings into the wild, where they are unlikely to survive, they decided to give them a head start as well.
In the desert tortoise early start program, biologists use radio transmitters to monitor females in the wild and portable X-ray machines to determine when females are pregnant. They take those females into an enclosure to lay eggs and then release them. Newly hatched chicks are raised in captivity until they reach a certain length. Twentynine Palms has a standard of 110 millimeters, or about 4 inches long, which takes seven to nine years. They are then re-released, usually using radio transmitters to monitor their health and movement.
Threats to turtles are everywhere
Desert tortoises were once so abundant that people driving through the Mojave River would bring them home. But in some areas of the California desert, their numbers have declined by up to 96 percent since the 1970s, according to research plots monitored by Christine Berry, a supervisory research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Ecological Research Center.
Marines aren’t the only threat to turtles. Roads and highways have fragmented previously wide-open desert areas into patches that are sometimes too small to allow for the breeding and genetic diversity needed to maintain population health. did. Climate warming is depleting some regions of the rainfall needed to sustain them.
Non-desert livestock grazed and trampled the turtles’ favorite plants, spreading unpalatable non-native grasses in their wake. Power lines have added miles of perches for crows, making it easier to spot young turtles.
Without turtles, the desert would be forever changed.
“Dessert tortoises are considered a keystone species, which means they have a disproportionate impact on the entire ecosystem,” said Hennen, a civilian who heads the conservation division of the base’s environmental affairs division.
Turtles pock the desert floor with holes that other animals use as shelter, and scatter seeds of native plants in their excrement. “They’re influencing other things that can be on the landscape,” Hennen said.
Read the full article to learn more about desert tortoise progress.
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Have a great weekend! From the Essential California team
Reporter Andrew J. Campa
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