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A Mojave Desert tortoise is shown in a quarantine area at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in Las Vegas on Friday, Sept. 2, 2011. The tortoise, some kept by people as pets, will be returned to the wild when they are healthy enough to leave.
Published Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011 | 2 a.m.
Updated Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011 | 1:10 p.m.
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Beyond the Sun
A study of Clark County’s protections for desert tortoises and other wildlife could lead to higher fees for development and an expansion of the area covered by the protections.
Although still in its early stages, a proposal to modify the county’s Multi-Species Habitat Conservation Plan could raise the fees from $550 to $1,600 an acre; expand by up to 200,000 acres the area covered by wildlife restrictions; and reduce the number of animals designated for research, from several dozen to fewer than 20.
“With climate change and renewable energy development (taking up thousands of acres of desert) ... and two decades of pretty much unmanaged breakneck-pace growth, we have to step up our game,” Nevada Conservation League Executive Director Scot Rutledge said.
Proponents of the changes such as Rutledge — a member of the advisory committee appointed by the Clark County Commission to review the protections — think the county should act now even though growth has slowed dramatically, to avoid the federal government imposing harsher restrictions.
But several commissioners don’t see the need for change now.
Commissioner Steve Sisolak said he doesn’t see the sense in pushing ahead with plans to preserve and protect animals on land that won’t be touched for years. The commissioner, whose district includes a habitat of relocated tortoises, thinks the drive to adopt a new plan has as much to do with a handful of government employees wanting to remain relevant while development is on hold as it does protecting wildlife.
“I think they want to expand their empire at the expense of development and other worthwhile causes,” Sisolak said. “It’s the tortoises, the frog, the butterfly, the mustard plant. It’s kind of like a black hole. You cannot throw enough money into this thing.”
To understand how the money is spent, Sisolak ordered the Desert Conservation Program to report on expenditures of money received from fees and through a federal land program. That report is scheduled to be delivered at Tuesday’s County Commission meeting.
“We should definitely protect endangered species, but we’ve studied this for a good 20 years. It’s gone too far,” Sisolak said.
Commissioner Tom Collins said the proposal has no chance at being adopted. “The likeliness of that thing passing is about the same as a whore with no teeth winning a beauty pageant,” he said.
Collins’ response reflects the strong emotion and line-in-the-sand stances that the desert tortoise evokes. It has been that way since 1990, when the Mojave Desert tortoise earned a place on the threatened species list, sending Clark County into action because the federal government would not allow development on its land — the U.S. government owns most of Clark County and Nevada — without plans to protect the species.
By 1995, a long-term conservation plan was formalized, a multispecies plan was approved in 2000 and in 2001 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service issued an “incidental take” permit for a multispecies habitat conservation plan. “Incidental take” means developers may kill a tortoise without penalty while developing desert land.
Rutledge wants the revised plan to change that by requiring the surveying of land and moving of tortoises before development, and in some cases building around habitat instead of bulldozing it.
The new process would be more expensive, and Rutledge, citing an independent economic analysis presented to the committee, favors increasing developers’ fees from $550 to $1,600 an acre.
“If you look at the fee increase on a per-home basis, given a moderate density of eight homes per acre … that’s not going to break anyone’s bank,” he said.
That plan permitted 145,000 acres for development through 2031.
With the development boom of the mid-2000s, desert was being developed faster than expected. At its peak in 2003, 8,500 acres were developed.
In response, the County Commission, in mid-2007, decided the plan needed to be amended. After years of study, that plan is close to being presented to commissioners for review, Rutledge said. The amended plan could call for the addition of 200,000 acres to be covered by the conservation plan.
Meanwhile, about 67,000 acres remain in the first conservation plan, with development occurring at a pace of only 900 acres a year. But Sisolak said he doesn’t see the point.
“We don’t need this right now,” he said. “This land won’t be touched for years.”
Even though growth has slowed, Rutledge believes that if the county doesn’t act now, the federal government will act for them once growth resumes.
“This is not a job-killing proposal,” Rutledge added. “And developers will be shooting themselves in the foot by not moving forward with a compromise.”
But Rutledge admits that political opposition to changes appears strong. That’s a worry because “politics are going to make the decision, not the science.”
In 2001, I saw a tortoise with a radio tracker on it that said "remove November 1995." Which I did. I wonder how good the data is when it comes to these tortoises. Also, the copper tape glued to the tortoise's back as an antenna on this animal seemed to have deformed the growth its shell.
"The commissioner, whose district includes a habitat of relocated tortoises, thinks the drive to adopt a new plan has as much to do with a handful of government employees wanting to remain relevant while development is on hold as it does protecting wildlife. "I think they want to expand their empire at the expense of development and other worthwhile causes," Sisolak said. "It's the tortoises, the frog, the butterfly, the mustard plant. It's kind of like a black hole. You cannot throw enough money into this thing."
Sisolak is again right on with this. It's also a peek under government's skirt -- like all police action it is constantly in need of being kept on a tight leash or that power will expand until there is no personal liberty remaining, only licensing.
"Indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the State's hostility to it." -- United States v. Penn, 647 F.2d 876 (9th Circuit, 1980), Judge Kennedy dissenting
When I was a little girl, I used to see horned toads, lizards, and tortoises all the time. I never see them anymore.
"In 2001, I saw a tortoise with a radio tracker on it that said "remove November 1995." Which I did."
mred -- your post reminds me of that old one about how a federal wildlife agency called the Washington Biological Survey wanted to track the migration of crows so it caught a bunch and banded them all before releasing them back into the wild. Out of necessity that little band on each crow's leg used a lot of abbreviations, so the instructions were something like "If found mail to Wash. Biol. Surv." and the address. Some time later they got a letter from an Arkansas farmer who wrote something like "Found one of your crows. Followed the instructions on the label. My wife washed it, bioled it and surved it for dinner. It's the worst thing we ever et."
"After the coffee things ain't so bad." -- Henry Herbert Knibbs, cowboy poet, d. 1945
All you commisioners care about is the money you can make when they develop the land -Look at Redrock. YOu don't care about the animals ar all.
Lets start protecting animals we do not need more growth in Vegas.
They need to conserve water not build more.
So what is the big flap about this ecological preservation of pristine desert for the animals that live in the desert.
There is no need for a new conservation plan for the Clark County permit. The only rationale for a new plan is to boost the number of acres of tortoise habitat that can be destroyed for development. Tortoise management and recovery should be left to the responsible federal agencies and the county should pay their mitigation fee and butt out.
PS - any mitigation monies are tortoise "blood money", paid in echange for tortoise lives and habitat to be sacrificed for development.
"You cannot throw enough money into this thing."
Wait, Sisolak doesn't have the report for the expenditures, so how is he so convinced too much money has been thrown at it?
Sounds like this program is funded through the per-acre fee and federal funds. Neither the state nor Clark County actually pay a penny for this program, right?
So what's the problem? Sisolak and Collins want to do the bidding of developers, and - as usual - are more interested in putting on a dog-and-pony show than following federal laws. How pathetic.
Sisolak and Collins should be looking out for the citizens of Clark County, not their big money contributors. These two are as transparent as glass.
Given the state of affairs one has to wonder why there would be any development out there now anyway. It might be decades before we recover to the point we need to expand that far.
As it stands now, it might well be the case that the best protection, that is, not allowing development to begin with, is the least expensive and the correct way to go.
The fee and acreage increase makes this sound like nothing more than revenue enhancement.