A tortoise in Central Nevada. 2005. CC Photo.
During the Evidentiary Hearing on September 20 in which the California Energy Commission sought final comment on their plan to approve the gigantic solar sprawl at Calico, the following exchange took place between CEC biologist Chris Huntley and others.
Emphases mine.
MS. MILES: So if you want to move any tortoises into Ord-Rodman — into the Ord-Rodman DWMA, you’ll have to disease test at least a hundred animals, is that your testimony or your comment?
MR. OTAHAL: That’s the current guidance that we are receiving.
MS. MILES: And has staff considered this guidance?
MR. HUNTLEY: This is all new information as far as the translocation plan.
MS. MILES: Did staff receive this information prior to tonight right now?
MR. HUNTLEY: Staff just heard about it a few minutes before.
MS. MILES: Would staff be revising some of their testimony on this basis?
MR. HUNTLEY: Staff stands by their testimony. And that’s why we have a translocation plan where some of these things are going to get hammered out in.
MS. MILES: So would staff estimates of the number of the tortoise likely — the tortoise mortality change as a result of this?
MR. HUNTLEY: Tortoise mortality could change if there’s a 5 percent mortality for any handled tortoises. I’d have to look at my tables. But I believe the range of direct and indirect effects likely covers that. So I think the total disclosure number is okay. But it is a potential mortality issue.
MR. RITCHIE: A quick question on the numbers there, Mr. Huntley. You were basing that off of a 5 percent mortality rate for just pure handling. But the receptor sites you were previously using a 50 percent mortality rate, correct?
MR. HUNTLEY: No, that’s — pardon me. For the control site for a tortoise that’s just handled, blood tested, and radio tagged, we placed a 5 percent mortality rate on that based on feedback from the Fish and Game. For the translocated tortoise, the tortoise physically moved from the project site and placed in a translocation site, we assumed a 50 percent mortality figure.
MR. RITCHIE: But then similarly a 50 percent mortality figure for the host tortoise in the translocation site who is handled and tagged and disease tested?
MR. HUNTLEY: That’s right.
MR. RITCHIE: But you wouldn’t apply that 50 percent mortality rate —
MR. HUNTLEY: — not to just an animal that was disease tested.
MR. RITCHIE: Even if that — so it’s the — I guess I’m confused.
MR. HUNTLEY: It’s apparently —
MR. RITCHIE: Previously the distinction —
MR. HUNTLEY: The translocated — I’ll have to look at my numbers. And forgive me if I’m getting muddled a little bit. But the translocated tortoises have a 50 percent — well, we assumed a 50 percent mortality rate. I believe that also included the host population. But a tortoise that is merely handled for disease testing and then placed back on the ground by a fairly controlled site, we had a 5 percent mortality rate.
The State of California is going into these projects fully aware that
- not only half the desert tortoises they relocate — a Federally listed Threatened species, remember — will die, and;
- that half the tortoises already living in the designated translocation areas will also die from stresses of overcrowding and competition,
- but that merely handling the tortoises for blood testing and radio-tagging them will kill one of every twenty tortoises so handled.
The Sierra Club knows this. The NRDC knows this. The Wilderness Society knows this. They fail to oppose these projects nonetheless.
Why do we even have an environmental movement?
Aw. Look, you know I’m solidly in your corner on this one, Chris, but those aren’t data. This is some corporate biostitute joker talking off the top of his head. The 50% mortality figure is sort-of data; this is the (unpublished, unvetted, unreviewed) mortality of translocated tortoises reported informally from ONE (Ft. Irwin) translocation study, which (iirc) was conducted during a drought. I have NEVER before seen the claim that unmoved “host” tortoises suffered similar mortality, and it would surprise me greatly if that were indeed the case; the guy quoted clearly just didn’t know. The 5% number is just made up off the top of somebody’s head, and would be a reasonable assumption for background mortality with or without tagging and blood-sampling.
There are real data out there—I am aware of several translocation studies of varying rigor—and if the biologists involved would get off their asses and publish some of it in other than internal reports and bullshit grey literature, we could actually start addressing these questions scientifically.
Do you know why all the other translocation results are not yet published? Because they show similar large mortality of translocated tortoises. I have worked on a translocation site other than Fort Irwin, and the biologist in charge will not even tell me what the current mortality is, because it is very high. I know, I was there.
Dr. Kristin Berry has told us the cumulative mortality rate for Fort Irwin for 2010 is now 47% for her study plot. The overall total is approaching half for all the 300 or so tortoises translocated, and another huge percentage for the recipient sites due apparently to competition with moved tortoises. These are actual numbers.
Dr. Berry’s study plots near Ft. Irwin where no translocations have occurred have zero to under 10% mortality (testimony given at Calico Solar Project hearing).
People do not want to believe these numbers, but they are not “off the top of someones’ head,” they are US Fish and Wildlife Service Desert Tortoise Recovery Office guidance for 2010 translocations.
Instead of having no published reports and going ahead and translocating hundreds of tortoises in several large projects this fall, why not wait for the science to be discussed and reviewed publicly? Because this is a mandate, not a process undergoing proper environmental review.
“Why do we even have an environmental movement?”
Because someone has to speak the truth!!!
Um. Chris. My dear friend. We don’t have an environmental movement, as you perfectly well know—and have not since about, oh, 1993. What we have in NRDC, Sierra, EDF, et al., is an interest sector distantly—very,very distantly—derived from and related to the environmental movement that once was, but which has discovered that “branding as” is way the hell easier than “being.” And hella more lucrative.
Tim Hermach calls them Gang Green.
There’s no movement now—but a ragged patchwork of grassroots individuals and groups—you, me, my pals, your pals, Solar Done Right, Phillip Smith and Reverend Ron, Camp Ivanpah, all the Small Greats protecting public land and communities from Death Ray Solar and other assaults.
It’s what’s so scary. And so down to the viscera and blood and bones essential. They have money power, we have moral power.Heartbreak power. Compassion power. Love power.
To speak of tortoise mortality with such clinical facility and (moral) muddledness is just fucking obscene. A clear enunciation of the horror we are up against.
Why we can’t stop.
They’re doing large-scale studies in Nevada and I’m pretty sure they’re getting nothing like 50% mortality.
nah, “another huge percentage” is not “an actual number.”
Competition for what?
Natural mortality is relatively high during droughts.
Like I said: background mortality around 5% is a reasonable estimate without radiotagging and blood-sampling. That’s not what Chris’s post says.
And those are mutually exclusive categories how, exactly?
Please refer to the latest guidance concerning renewable energy tortoise mitigation, prepared by the experts in the field of tortoise biology:
Public Review Draft: Recommendations of Independent Science Advisors for The California Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), Prepared For Renewable Energy Action Team: California Department of Fish & Game U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service U.S. Bureau of Land Management California Energy Commission, Prepared By The DRECP Independent Science Advisors, August 2010, Produced by the Conservation Biology Institute.
“As with the Mohave ground squirrel, the advisors do not recommend translocation of desert tortoise as effective mitigation or conservation action, in part because translocated tortoises suffer high mortality rates. We do endorse implementing roadside fencing to reduce roadkill and road undercrosses to improve population connectivity, as called for in the Desert Tortoise Recovery Plan.” (p. 77)
—Dr. Kristin Berry, USGS; Dr. Todd Esque, USGS.
The numbers have yet to be published for 2010 translocation studies, but they are so bad that Dr. Kristin Berry and Dr. Todd Esque, both involved in the Ft. Irwin translocation, say just DO NOT translocate Tortoises, period.
http://www.drecp.org/
Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan
We forcibly relocated the Cherokee, Seminole, Creek and Choctaw nations in 1831. They were in the way of expansion. A lot of them died.
From the 1860s to the 1970s we gradually squeezed the Navajo out of their lands. They were in the way of westward expansion.
In the 1950s the Canadian government forcibly relocated whole communities of Inuit to establish sovereignty over the High Arctic.
Of course some tortoises will die from forced relocation. But we gotta do it, don’t we? It’s the American way.
Thanks, Laura.
Those quoted guidelines are, in fact, simply opinions off the top of Esque’s and Berry’s heads. (btw, I am pseudonymous here, but I used to know both pretty well. Todd’s worth listening to; Kristin Berry is, IMO, a poor scientist.)
I am talking about data.
My problem with the specifics of Chris’s post is with the conclusions he draws from extremely limited data.
Maybe somebody has collated the data from all of the tortoise relocation studies that have been attempted (these date back at least to the ca. 1990 Honda test-track project), but if so it’s not publicly available.
I am no fan of avoidable tortoise relocation but if you want to convince me that it’s pointless, show me some data.