California might have to decide between saving the desert tortoise and promoting its anti-global warming agenda: a major solar power project in the Mojave Desert keeps disturbing the ancient reptiles.
BrightSource has spent $56 million so far to protect and relocate the tortoises, but even at that price, the work has met with unforeseen calamity: Animals crushed under vehicle tires, army ants attacking hatchlings in a makeshift nursery and one small tortoise carried off to an eagle nest, its embedded microchip pinging faintly as it receded.
. . .
The company made its first concession to the tortoise during planning, giving up about 10% of its expected power output in a redesign that reduced the project footprint by 12% and the number of 460-foot-tall “power towers” from seven to three.
BrightSource also agreed to install 50 miles of intricate fencing, at a cost of up to $50,000 per mile, designed to prevent relocated tortoises from climbing or burrowing back into harm’s way.
The first survey of tortoises at the site found just 16. Based on biological calculations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued BrightSource a permit to move a maximum of 38 adults, and allowed a total of three accidental deaths per year during three years of construction. Any more in either category and the entire project would be shut down.
The limit put the company under enormous pressure, as more and more tortoises began cropping up and BrightSource’s project came closer to the federal thresholds.
At least it’s not the Kennedy’s objecting to windmills off their Nantucket compound, but the tortoises may be almost as well-connected. Nuclear power, anyone?
“Is that a tortoise? There’s good eating on one of those…”
–Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
Thanks for posting this, Heather.
I learned a lot about desert tortoises (never piss one off, apparently) and was please to learn how “well-connected” they are–like the Kennedys.
Actually, as loathsome as the Kennedys are, and hypocrisy aside, I sympathize with their effort to keep Nantucket free of windmills, a form of visual (and aural, for those close by) pollution rivaled only by the sight of Mr. Ted himself.