THE TORTOISE AND THE CATTLE RANCHER.

• Author: Fantle, Will
• Position: Government regulation of cattle grazing to protect the desert tortoise

In May, a federal judge sent a sharp rebuke to the Bush Administration for backtracking on a commitment to protect California's endangered species. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), said Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court in Northern California, had failed to follow through on its promise to stop cattle grazing on lands essential to the survival of the threatened desert tortoise.

"What's going on seems to me in violation of the letter, the spirit, and everything about this whole process," Judge Alsup told the BLM's attorney. Saying he felt "misled," the judge demanded, "When is the BLM going to come into compliance?"

He also suggested political motives might be behind the foot dragging. "I think this has something to do with the change of Administrations," he said.

The desert tortoise lives in the sprawling California Desert Conservation Area. Bounded by the Mexican border, Death Valley, and the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, the California Desert Conservation Area was established by Congress in 1976. It covers twenty-five million acres--the size of the state of Virginia.

In 1994, Congress acted again, making national parks of the Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Monuments and designating 3.5 million acres of the California Desert Conservation Area as wilderness. "The federally owned desert lands of Southern California constitute a public wildland resource of extraordinary and inestimable value for this and future generations," Congress proclaimed.

"The desert tortoise is really a keystone species for the region," says Daniel Patterson, a former Bureau of Land Management employee.

A trained desert ecologist, Patterson became so frustrated with the agency that he quit his job in the fall of 1996 and went to work for the Center for Biological Diversity. That group is one of the plaintiffs suing the Bureau.

The desert tortoise species has been around for more than a million years. It has adapted to its grueling environment by living underground much of the year in burrows it digs for protection from searing heat, freezing cold, and predators. The tortoises emerge during the spring to feed on wildflowers and other desert morsels and in the fall when mature tortoises lay their eggs.

The tortoise's many burrows are of vital importance to other desert critters, which use them for homes. "They're sort of like homebuilders for wildlife in the Mojave Desert," notes Patterson.

In the early 1970s, biologists discovered that the...