Louis Sahagun of the Los Angeles Times:
More than 100 biologists and contract workers fanned out across a nearly pristine stretch of the eastern Mojave Desert on Friday to start rounding up tortoises blocking construction of the first major solar energy plant to be built on public land in Southern California.
On a sunny morning in the height of tortoise courting season, the biologists methodically peered under every bush and into every hole on both sides of a two-mile lane traversing the project site. Following close behind, workers bladed century-old creosote bushes and erected fencing in areas that will soon be declared a “tortoise-free zones.”
The effort in San Bernardino County’s panoramic Ivanpah Valley, just north of Interstate 15 and about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, disrupted complex tortoise social networks and blood lines linked for centuries by dusty trails, shelters and hibernation burrows.
Mercy Vaughan’s crew are “biologists” the same way Guantanamo is a “Caribbean beach town.”
WTF.
“Our goal is zero kill”?
This sounds more sanitized, political-militaristic than what one might hope to hear from a presumably compassionate biologist. I’m hearing Rumsfeld on “collateral damage.” I’m feeling horror. Almost as much for her as for the tortoises.
Almost.
How about we create an industry free zone for the entire Mojave?
If any environmental group is sitting on the sideline still mulling over whether or not to file a NEPA suit, may I suggest now might be a good time?
This time next week, the tortoise roundup may be finished and earth movers may come in, judging by how fast they ran out of the starting gate here.
Heartbreaking and shortsighted…..
there goes the neighborhood
It is very sad and it just breaks my heart.