Desert tortoise faces uncertain future amid Bundy conflict
In 1990, federal officials listed the Mojave Desert species as threatened across its range, touching off a series of new regulations and initiatives aimed at saving the long-lived reptile.
One of the people caught up in the effort to save the tortoise was a Bunkerville rancher named Cliven Bundy, who didn�t take kindly to being told to limit the number of cows he was grazing on public land in northeastern Clark County.
So began a decades-long dispute that would inflame anti-government sentiment, turn Bundy and his family into heroes of the militia movement and nearly end in bloodshed in 2014.
But despite all that has happened in the two decades since Bundy famously �fired� federal range managers over protections for the tortoise, the situation on the ground is largely unchanged. Bundy�s cattle continue to roam the vast swath of federal land 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, and the tortoises are still out there, too.
In fact, the reptile�s numbers appear to be increasing in that area.
At least one expert studying the species freely admits he doesn�t know why.
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Photo from Review Journal.
