You may have just killed it

A desert tortoise carries water in its bladder the way we might carry a canteen, months of it stored against a rainless summer. Startle one, lift it, hold it a while and it empties the canteen. In a wet year the animal walks that off. In a dry one that water was its whole margin, and it can be spent quickly.

Ron Berger has been putting this in print, with exclamation points, for years: if you see a tortoise in the wild, don't touch it, don't pick it up. He founded The Desert Tortoise Conservancy in 2012 and still runs it as president. On Saturday afternoon he brought the argument to the Hi-Desert Nature Museum in Yucca Valley, in a free talk called Securing a Future for the Desert Tortoise: Conservation in the Morongo Basin and Beyond.

Thirty-six years of protection

The Mojave desert tortoise has been federally threatened since 1990. California listed it as threatened a year earlier, in 1989, and has since decided that wasn't enough. The state's Fish and Game Commission found in April 2024 that uplisting was warranted and the tortoise became a California endangered species on July 15, 2025. It has held that status for a little over a year now. But if you missed it happening, you weren't the only one.

Consider what the protection bought. Federal monitoring modeled across most of the range found adult tortoises falling from roughly 362,000 in 2001 to about 234,000 in 2020, a decline of 36 percent. More than a third of them, gone in two decades, on the protected list the entire time.

The basin's own patch held up better than the worst of it. The Joshua Tree monitoring area went from just under 8 adult tortoises per square mile to about 6.6, a 17 percent decline, against something closer to 54 percent in the Western Mojave conservation areas. Read that carefully, though. The 1994 federal recovery plan set 10 adults per square mile as the density a population needs to sustain itself. In 2001, two of California's ten tortoise conservation areas cleared that bar. By 2020, none did.

The basin held on better than the western Mojave, but unfortunately still sits below the number the recovery plan asks for.

Most of the pressure is local

Solar fields, mines, and distant permitting decisions account for some of the damage. Most of what a tortoise in the Morongo Basin runs into is ordinary human infrastructure.

Ravens are the clearest example. Their numbers inside tortoise range have climbed steeply since the 1970s and people set the stage for that increase. Ravens eat what's in the trash, drink from irrigation runoff and the leak nobody's fixed. They'll nest and perch on the poles and structures we put up, and pick roadkill off pavement we poured. A hatchling tortoise has a shell that stays soft for years, and ravens only have to learn that once.

Dogs do a quieter version of the same thing. A federal risk model published in March worked through 6,727 California tortoises examined across 50 sites and found that the modeled risk of severe shell and limb trauma rose about fourfold between the 1970s and the 2000s, climbing steeply within roughly seven and a half miles of a settlement. Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Landers and Twentynine Palms form a chain of settlements strung through habitat, and not much of that habitat sits more than seven and a half miles from somebody's town.

Roads make the strongest case, because roads are also where somebody has already demonstrated a fix. Along a two-lane road in the Mojave National Preserve, researchers found tortoise signage depressed out to nearly a quarter mile from the pavement. Along Highway 58, sign counts kept climbing out to half a mile. Highway 58 also got tortoise fencing, and researchers counted 93 percent fewer collisions along the fenced stretch than along an unfenced one. Two wildlife crossings are now being planned on Highway 62, at the Morongo Grade and the Yucca Grade, after the state Wildlife Conservation Board awarded the Mojave Desert Land Trust a $5.5 million planning grant in February. Engineering, permitting and design run three years on their own, and construction money hasn't been raised yet. Long as it may be, this would be a big win for our shelled friends.

If you find one

Handling a desert tortoise takes federal and state authorization, and a driver who has pulled onto the shoulder does not have it. Inside Joshua Tree National Park the rule is stated flatly: touching, handling, moving, or possessing a tortoise is illegal. Somebody will tell you there's an exception for lifting one out of traffic. Do your best to correct the rumor, so that we don't spook them as the cross the road.

Call the state's Inland Deserts wildlife region, which covers San Bernardino County, or whoever manages the ground you're standing on. Inside the park, call the park. If the tortoise is an active traffic hazard, that's a 911 call. It is always worth it to save a tortoise and you'll find that everyone around you agrees.

For years now we've been planting "Brake For Snakes" signs around town, but maybe it's time for a new art project. Perhaps the people of our community can join the effort with road signs and general awareness. Every tortoise protected is a path toward a brighter future.