Off-roaders lose to tortoise

Popular trails in parts of Mojave have been closed to protect the imperiled desert animal's habitat

- By Alex Wigglesworth

OFF-ROAD vehicles like this one in Johnson Valley have posed a threat to the California desert tortoise.

(ETHAN SWOPE For The Times)

MOJAVE DESERT — The desert tortoise, a once-resilient reptile, is a key stone species in the Mojave Desert, where other animals' survival depends on the burrows it digs.

But it is imperiled in California thanks in part to an unusual enemy: off-road vehicles that race through thousands of miles of trails — official and unofficial — that crisscross millions of acres of tortoise habitat.

Federal Judge Susan Illston recently ordered the Bureau of Land Management to shut down 2,000 miles of these trails, saying the off-road vehicles — technically called "off-highway vehicles" or "OHVs" - are "a significant ongoing cause of harm" to the tortoise population. Since the 1970s, tortoise populations have fallen by 96% in some plots monitored by biologist Kristin Berry of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Biologist Ed LaRue, who has taken up the cause of the animals, watched the other day as a lifted pickup truck with a large American flag and a utility task vehicle raced down a trail in the Mojave, sending up plumes of dust. The vehicles barreled over a road and careened into the Ord Rodman Area, which the federal government has deemed critical to the desert tortoise's survival. One appeared to then drive off the designated route.

"This happens all the time the roads give them access, and then once they get there, they just kind of drive cross-country," LaRue said. "And that's where you get the burrows crushed."

Ilston gave the Bureau of Land Management until 2029 to come up with a new network of off-road vehicle routes in the area.