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Banking on Gopher tortoises
Endangered Species Bulletin, August, 2005 by Mike Groutt
The tortoise beat the hare in a fabled footrace. But the gopher tortoises (Gopherus polypherus) of southwestern Alabama have been slowly losing their race for living space. New homes, roads, and businesses squeeze them out, and the exclusion of fire alters the tortoise's open longleaf pine habitat. Thankfully, a new approach known as "conservation banking" is providing a better future for this species.
The gopher tortoise is a large turtle that lives in deep burrows, often up to 25 feet (7.5 m) in length, in upland habitats usually dominated by stands of longleaf pines. These burrows also provide shelter for more than 360 other species, including the eastern indigo snake (Drymarchon corais couperi), which is listed under Endangered Species Act as threatened. Tortoises require well-drained, sandy soil in which to dig their burrows, herbaceous plants for food, a sparse understory, and open areas for basking.
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Habitat alteration and land development pose the most serious threat to the tortoise's survival. Habitat loss contributed significantly to its listing as a threatened species in parts of Alabama and throughout Mississippi and Louisiana. This is particularly true in Mobile County, Alabama, which underwent a 94 percent increase in residential development in the 1990s.
Biologists with the Fish and Wildlife Service's Daphne, Mississippi, Field Office recognized that to protect the species, action was needed to conserve large, contiguous plots of tortoise habitat. Much of the native longleaf pine ecosystem has disappeared across the South. Small restored areas of longleaf pines are not enough to provide for long-term health of the tortoise population.
Service biologists turned to conservation banking as a means of accommodating both habitat conservation and other land uses. Conservation banks are permanently protected, privately or publicly owned lands managed for endangered or threatened species. The Service approves habitat or species "credits" based on the natural resource values on the bank lands. The bank owner is free to sell--or use for itself--credits allotted to the bank for species or their habitats.
The Service found an enthusiastic first partner in the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System (MAWSS). Much of the drinking water for this area comes from Converse Reservoir in western Mobile County. Converse Reservoir sits in an area undergoing rapid development, and MAWSS has been purchasing land within the reservoir's watershed to create a buffer. Using the buffer as a conservation area for tortoises provided the ideal solution for keeping development at a safe distance and providing an economic benefit for the conservation of the site.
In 2001, MAWSS, working with the Daphne Field Office and the organization Environmental Defense, opened a 222-acre (90-hectare) conservation bank. The site marked the first time a federally sanctioned conservation bank had been used for the gopher tortoise, and the first time a conservation bank had been established in Alabama.
In addition to helping MAWSS, the bank has benefited individual property owners by allowing them to buy credits that allow them develop property where previously they may have had to make project modifications because of a resident gopher tortoise.
Gopher tortoises also benefit. Rather than individuals living in relative isolation on small parcels of land where their future would be in doubt, tortoises relocated to the bank find a large area of optimal habitat where they can interact with other tortoises to create a stable population.
Before the bank could become operational, much of the area needed to be restored. Since the site had not previously been managed for gopher tortoises, natural processes--such as periodic fires--had been suppressed. Thick, woody brush had grown up, choking out native grasses. Fortunately, the cost of restoring habitat for gopher tortoises proved manageable. For areas where restoration could be accomplished with prescribed burning, the cost was as little as $15 per acre (about $37 per ha). However, where restoration included removal of invasive plants and planting of longleaf pine seedlings, the cost ran from $50 to $200 per acre ($124 to $495 per ha).
The habitat at the MAWSS site has now been improved to more closely resemble a natural longleaf pine forest ecosystem. Prescribed burns in 2000 and 2002, as well as hardwood timber harvesting in 2001, have opened up the forest to allow for gopher tortoise burrows in the grassy understory. In 2003, herbicides were used to control cogon grass, an invasive species that, if allowed to spread, would render the habitat unusable for the gopher tortoise. Another invasive species, the imported red fire ant, is also a concern since they prey on gopher tortoise hatchlings.
The site was initially home to 14 gopher tortoises. Since 2001, another 70 have been relocated to the bank from small, scattered parcels. All are tested for diseases and quarantined before release.
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