SAVE THEM ALL: The Sonoran Desert Tortoise makes today’s Endangered All-Stars thanks to a campaign by WildEarth Guardians and the Western Watersheds Project to add the reptile to the Endangered Species List. The groups petitioned the government for ESA status in June, 2009, asserting that the species has lost 51% of its numbers in Arizona since 1987 due to disease as well as loss of habitat to urban sprawl, livestock grazing, increasing human activity along the border, and climate change. Several months after the petition was filed, the US Fish & Wildlife Service agreed to begin a full governmental review.
The tortoise has become a beloved species throughout the southwest, championed by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum outside Tucson, which sponsors a Tortoise Adoption Program for the wily, charismatic creatures: Thousands of unwanted or surplus tortoises have been placed on the properties of selected custodian families.
Meanwhile, the tortoise continues to wait for ESA protection. “We’re pleading with them now to act before it’s too late,” says Nicole Rosmarino of WildEarth Guardians. “The trends are very bleak. The tortoise is perennially facing death by 1,000 cuts.”
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