Best Reptile Service
STAFF PICK: Tortoise Adoption Program, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum IT'S ABOUT SUNSET in early June and you're taking advantage of one of the last few coolish evenings before summer's dog days and dog nights. You're just lighting the barbecue when you notice a small boulder, or a large dinner plate, moving at a modest clip across the patio--on its own!Upon closer inspection, you see one Gopherus Xerobates agassizii Cooper--or desert tortoise. What you do with this visitor during the next 48 hours may be more governed by state regulations than driving a school bus down the freeway.
But not to fear: A cadre of tortoise protectors and educators is at your beck and call. Yes, they even have a hot line (883-1380, ext. 231). The Tortoise Adoption Program, at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, aids in the welfare of tortoises in captivity and helps ensure that tortoises living in the wild remain there--all by educating us non-reptilians. They'll help you figure out whether that tortoise resting in your verbena planter is a male or female, or more importantly, someone's escaped pet or a wild tortoise that needs to be returned quickly whence she came.
Howard E. Lawler, the Desert Museum's curator of herpetology and ichthyology, along with veterinarian James L. Jarchow, put together an all-you-could-ever-want-to-know guide to keeping--or not keeping--desert tortoises. The staff and volunteers at the Tortoise Adoption Program will send you a copy, plus walk you through any areas where you need guidance.
If you want to adopt a tortoise, they'll provide you with the dietary needs of your new pet (including which of your backyard plants have to go because they're poisonous) and the specifications for a tortoise enclosure (including how deep to bury the cinder blocks to keep the tortoise from burrowing out). Much of what they tell you is in strict accordance with a spate of Arizona wildlife laws and regulations.
The rules and regs are all with good reason.
Housing developments loping across the desert floor, taking arroyos and hilltops alike, have resulted in sending many of these long-lived reptiles (80-100 years) off in search of new digs. New roads, the use of off-road vehicles, agriculture, mining, overgrazing and vandalism have also compromised habitats, according to Lawler's 1994 edition of "The Desert Tortoise: A Natural History."
Desert tortoises have been strictly protected in Arizona since 1987. It's illegal to collect tortoises from the wild. But it's not illegal to have one as a pet, as long as you don't snatch your new friend while she's roaming her territory. Most of the tortoises available for adoption from the Desert Museum were found by someone like you or me after they were uprooted by four-wheel-drive maniacs or other human forces. This year, with the dry spring and new construction, the Desert Museum had its hands full with more found tortoises than they could handle.
The state allows one tortoise per family member. And even after you get a tortoise, it remains property of the state of Arizona.
--Susan Knight
