Desert Tortoise Monitoring Report Available
The Desert Tortoise Recovery Office released the draft Range-wide Monitoring of the Mojave Population of Desert Tortoise: 2010 Annual Report . The surveys of key desert tortoise habitat revealed higher densities of tortoise in some areas than were observed in previous years, although the report judges that for 3 of the monitored areas, the densities are consistently high. However, because of refinements in the survey techniques and resources available for the surveys, accurate population trends cannot be established from the surveys yet. According to the draft report, tortoise density in the Ord-Rodman critical habitat unit was 7.5 animals per square kilometer. The surveys in 2008 and 2009 noted a density of 6 per square kilometer. Surveys in the Ivanpah critical habitat unit observed only 5 tortoises, resulting in an estimated density of 1.1 tortoise per square kilometer. This is significant because construction crews for the nearby Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System--bei