PAHRUMP VALLEY TIMES (Nevada) 20 September 06 Commission chairman attacks higher tortoise fees (Mark Waite)
A map showing desert tortoise habitat in Pahrump Valley was part of the presentation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during an open house at the Pahrump Community Library yesterday afternoon. Areas likely to be inhabited by tortoises are the ones with the squiggles around the town.
Jeri Krueger, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Biologist, said just this past Monday her office received a call from a resident in the southern part of Pahrump Valley about an endangered desert tortoise.
"There was a development going on and there was a tortoise in the person's half-built garage," she said. "We've had a couple dozen, at least, that have been turned over to the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center."
It's evidence the endangered animal lives in Pahrump. But talk by the federal government of reinstituting a $550-per-acre fee for developments in the high impact areas for desert tortoise heated Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis's temper Tuesday.
A short-term habitat conservation plan of two years is being considered by the Fish and Wildlife Service covering parts of the Pahrump Valley, Krueger said. That would enable Nye County to apply for incidental take permits for the species in areas under development in southern Nye County considered desert tortoise habitat.
A longer-term project would be a southern Nye County multi-species habitat conservation plan, encompassing all of southern Nye County within the range of the desert tortoise, up to southern Beatty.
Nye County Director of Natural Resources Jim Marble said the amount of desert tortoise habitat in the short-term plan that would be disturbed in Pahrump Valley amounted to 51 acres, most of it east of Highway 160, a little to the west of the highway in the northern part of the Pahrump Valley.
Those 51 acres are a mix of high-impact areas, with the $550 mitigation fee, down to areas of low impact, with a mitigation fee of $250 per acre.
The short-term plan would designate the desert tortoise habitat in Pahrump as a low-impact area. Krueger said the fees are only under consideration at this time; nothing has been finalized.
Krueger said there haven't been surveys of individual pieces of property. They would be too expensive.
"We would assume desert tortoise populations based on the adjacent habitat. Then we would also take into consideration the amount of disturbance in that area. The more disturbance in an area, the lower the quality of the habitat," she said.
Hollis complained loudly about the increased mitigation fees being proposed, after the county negotiated for fees lower than the $650 per acre paid in Clark County.
"I'm one of them that don't want any species to go extinct, but if this country wants to protect them then this country can pay for them," Hollis said. "All those other states that come here and gripe and complain about things we do here, then they have to pay for the situation. If Fish and Wildlife wants to do the right thing, Fish and Wildlife can ask for money to help pay for their species."
"First there's this species, then this species, then another one until people in this valley are not going to be able to build because fish and wildlife has designated a species. I don't think the desert tortoise is endangered or threatened. When you have a creosote bush, people are going to say this is desert tortoise habitat."
Clearly angry, Hollis added, "From now on, I'm not playing this bureaucracy game with you federal people, put in writing and I want it in blood."
Marble said the cost of fencing off desert tortoise habitat and transporting them to the desert tortoise recovering center would be paid by the developer, independently of the per-acre fees, if there are any tortoises found on their property.
Hollis said the Nye County fairgrounds project -- which he described as 427 acres of desert tortoise habitat -- could be affected.
The short-term plan is expected to be completed by the end of this year. If the plan qualifies, it will streamline the permit processing system.
The long-term plan will likely identify additional species of animals and habitats and is expected to be completed by the fall of 2007.
Commission chairman attacks higher tortoise fees