That's a helpful starting point, said Roy Averill-Murray, Desert Tortoise Recovery Coordinator with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Reno. "Everything in the past has been based on professional opinion and observation of tortoises and just extrapolating and drawing lines on a map," Averill-Murray said. "One of the things this will hopefully allow us to do is look at these environmental variables in light of potential climate change and see how tortoise habitat might look in the future." The map could, for example, help inform decisions about where to build things like highways, railroads, wind farms and solar power stations. Those types of barriers can block tortoises from moving to new habitats as the environment changes. Already, researchers have used the new map as a guideline for moving hundreds of desert tortoises to make way for the U.S. army's Fort Irwin National Training Center. Nussear's earlier work shows that tortoises do well with relocation, but the issue remains controversial. In another study, scientists compared genetic information with the habitat map to see whether corridors existed to connect unrelated populations of tortoises with each other. Allowing for gene flow is an important strategy for conservation. With more studies like these, Averill-Murray said, the new map should give tortoises a leg up. "It's a huge starting point," he said. "It's going to be used a lot." Related Links: |
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