EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE (Mesa, Arizona) 22 March 08 Desert tortoise owners coming out of their shells (Mandy Zajac)

The Ruhland family is used to finding wildlife on their property.

Rattlesnakes, javelinas, quail, raccoons and rabbits are ordinary visitors in their neck of northeast Mesa. They’ve even come home to a bobcat in the garage. Now the family is hosting another creature, one they’ve welcomed to their backyard by special request.

“We adopted a desert tortoise,” says Sally Ruhland. “We read up on it together all winter and got the backyard ready for her, and now she’s here. She’s a healthy, beautiful tortoise.”

The Ruhlands are among many East Valley residents who have converted their backyards into habitats for the Arizona-native reptiles, which had been offered for adoption by Arizona Game and Fish before this spring, when the agency handed its program to the Scottsdale-based Phoenix Herpetological Society.

“There is no shortage of tortoises to adopt,” says Kellie Tharp, an environmental education manager with Arizona Game and Fish. “We’ve typically received anywhere from 200 to 300 tortoises a year in the Valley, and all of those tortoises need homes.”

Russ Johnson, president of Phoenix Herpetological Society, says his organization has about 20 tortoises now, with 30 due to arrive from Arizona Game and Fish once they come out of hibernation. Most will be adopted. “There are years we’ve had waiting lists,” he says.

Orphans come in all year from a variety of sources: Tortoise owners die, move or can no longer care for their reptiles and return them to the agency. Others allow tortoises to breed — a serious no-no, according to Tharp and Johnson — and wind up with a dozen hatchlings that state regulations prohibit them from keeping.

Some are found wandering through neighborhoods, turned in by people unable to tell if they’re escaped pets or a wild creature disoriented by subdivisions that have sprouted up in areas that were once natural tortoise habitat.

Once cared for by man, they cannot be returned to the wild.

“Our goal is for tortoises to remain wild,” says Tharp. “But there’s a large population of them that will never be able to live in nature. We say: Once a captive, always a captive.”

That’s because tortoises that have come into contact with man have a hard time faring on their own, and they can transmit diseases to fragile wild desert tortoise populations.

In the wild, desert tortoises forage for plants to eat, retreat to the shade of their burrows during the hottest part of the day, and slake their thirst at puddles that form after rainfall. They do pretty much the same things in a properly appointed suburban backyard.

Roseanne Wagner says she didn’t have to drastically transform her Ahwatukee Foothills backyard to make it ready for Tortie, the mild-mannered female tortoise she’s had since 1998. She built a burrow of cinder blocks and plywood and covered it with dirt; was careful about the placement of her irrigation system so as not to flood Tortie with water; and blocked a gap beneath her backyard gate.

She also took a workshop to learn what types of food plants to install, specimens like chuparosa and fairyduster. She allows some weeds to grow and buys a square of Bermuda grass sod once a year.

“There’s a lot of front-end learning in the beginning,” says Tharp. “But once you’re well-versed in their diet and behavior, and you’ve made the accommodations in your yard, it’s pretty easy.”

Wagner, who says she’s constantly on the go, hasn’t seen her tortoise since October, when Tortie went into hibernation. Now, Wagner’s watching the burrow in anticipation of Tortie’s vernal awakening.

“I love not having to fuss over her too much,” she says, “But I do look forward to her coming out every spring. I putter around in the yard quite a bit, and it’s nice to have her kind of doing her own thing at the same time.”
Desert tortoise owners coming out of their shells

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