Stick your neck out and adopt a desert tortoise | Here & Now

What has four scaly legs and spends 90% of its life underground? It could be your new pet. x

Peter O[Dowd: Arizona Game and Fish Department’s desert tortoise adoption program began last week with more than 300 animals available for adoption. That’s more orphaned tortoises than it’s ever had at this point in the season, according to program manager Tegan Wolf. Wolf says that people are illegally breeding Sonoran Desert tortoises in their backyards. Sometimes dozens of tortoises from a single home will end up at the Game and Fish Department’s headquarters in north Phoenix.

In Joshua Tree National Park, rangers say the population has fallen 90% since the 1980s. Human development has decimated their habitat; Our homes have destroyed theirs. Our roads have become black-ribbon death traps for the slow-motion torts. Our trash also attracts an exploding population of ravens, which prey on young tortoises. Their shells are not hard enough to protect them from the birds’ beaks until they’ve reached 10 years old, according to the National Park Service.

The population of Sonoran Desert tortoises is stable, however. And in the last week of March, when the animals are finally active again after a long winter brumation, Wolf has about a dozen tortoises lined up to go home with new families.

About the Image: Thanos, a middle-aged Sonoran Desert tortoise, has struggled to find a new home. (Peter O’Dowd/Here & Now)