Friday, April 7, 2023 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
The desert tortoise was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in1992. A threatened species is defined as any “which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that tortoise populations plunged 37% throughout their range from 2004 to 2014.
Threats to the tortoise include habitat loss through urbanization, disease, raven predation, drought/climate change and recently the build-out of large-scale solar energy.
The Bureau of Land Management has accepted large-scale solar applications on over 100,000 acres of desert tortoise habitat in Nevada. That is about 25,000 acres in the Pahrump Valley, 60,000 in the Amargosa Valley, 12,000 in the Indian Springs Valley and 46,000 on Sarcobatus Flat. While some of these areas are not feasible to develop, many are on a fast-track for development, like the Pahrump Valley projects.
In 2021, 139 tortoises were moved off the site of the approved Yellow Pine Solar Project in the Pahrump Valley in a record-breaking drought year, and 33 of those were killed by badgers. Predation, disorientation and heat exposure have all been identified as mortality factors for translocated tortoises.
The Environmental Protection Agency has identified 15 million acres of previously disturbed brownfields suitable for renewable energy, and we have vast potential to use rooftops and parking lot canopies as space for solar energy.
Must we drive species to extinction when so many good alternatives are out there?
The writer is co-founder of the environmental organization Basin and Range Watch.
