Desert Tortoise Surveys in the Tonopah Field Office

This is a new project of one-year duration that will provide baseline distribution and status information on the Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) within the jurisdiction of the Tonopah Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This project will provide comparative information to regularly surveyed parts of the desert tortoise¿s range (e.g., within designated critical habitat), which will help determine the importance of tortoises in this area to recovery of the species. Information from the project will also be useful in assessing tortoise habitat models at the northern periphery of the species¿ range.