An uneasy coexistence
Can fragile tortoises and power plants survive one another?
Stubborn does not come close to describing the desert tortoise, a species that did its evolving more than 220 million years ago and has since remained resolutely prehistoric.
Its slowpoke take on biological adaptation has exposed modern vulnerabilities. The persnickety reptile is today beset by respiratory infections and prone to disease. Its only defenses are the shell on its back and the scent of its unspeakably foul urine.
How this creature the size of a shoe box became the single biggest obstacle to industrial-scale solar development in the Mojave Desert is turning into a true story of the survival of the fittest.
At the $2.2-billion Brightsource Energy solar farm in the Ivanpah Valley, the tortoise brought construction to a standstill for three months when excavation work found far more animals than biologists expected.
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.
History has shown the tortoise to be a stubborn survivor, withstanding upheavals that caused the grand dinosaur extinction and ice ages that wiped out most living creatures. But unless current recovery efforts begin to gain traction, this threatened species could become collateral damage in the war against fossil fuels.
Costly conservation efforts by state and federal agencies and solar companies have created a mishmash of strategies that one scientist says amounts to a “grand science experiment,” said Jeff Lovich, who studies the impact of renewable energy projects on desert tortoises for the U.S. Geological Survey.
“One could argue that they are nature’s greatest success story,” Lovich said. “Yet over half the world’s turtles are in dire need of help. The common denominator is humans. They may not survive us.” An ideal site
Brightsource’s project at Ivanpah is the first large-scale solar plant to enter the desert tortoise regulatory maze. Its experience is a case study for how the booming solar industry must deal with the reptile.
Long before construction began, Brightsource was warned that the site was thick with tortoises, more so than any of the other dozen solar farms planned for that part of the Mojave.
But Brightsource wanted the site because it is ideal for generating solar power. So the company negotiated with state and federal agencies to hash out meticulously detailed protocols for collecting and relocating tortoises, also agreeing to monitor them for five years after they were moved.
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.
The pressure boiled over after company biologists discovered an adult female tortoise with its carapace crushed in October 2010, during a media tour of the site. Biologists concluded that a vehicle struck the animal and ordered it euthanized.
A flurry of emails ensued. Steve Deyoung, then a Brightsource vice president, wrote to a federal biologist: “How in God’s name could anyone blame us? It is completely unconscionable that we would be blamed for this. I simply cannot sit back and watch this happen.”
Ultimately, the death was not attributed to the project. But other mishaps occurred, many of them documented in 36 boxes of project files stored at the Bureau of Land Management office in Needles.
The reports read like medical charts: a juvenile had his right forelimb gnawed by rodent, a tortoise died of heat distress after being caught in the black plastic erosion fencing, hatchlings were set upon by army ants, which killed four babies still in their eggs and injured four others.
The project’s bottom line took on an inevitable arc: as tortoise numbers rose, costs went up.
Brightsource, which was paying to have as many as 100 biologists to be on the site at one time, began seeing red. The company warned that tortoise mitigation was jeopardizing Ivanpah’s viability. In an email to a BLM official, Deyoung complained that tortoises were at that point costing the company as much as $40 million. “This truly could kill the project,” he wrote.
Brightsource lawyer Jeffrey D. Harris wrote to the California Energy Commission to suggest that if the Ivanpah crashed because of tortoises, the state’s renewable energy goals would meet the same The Mojave population of desert tortoise is a federally listed threatened species whose designated critical habitat is often within the boundaries of solar energy projects. Developers must take steps to protect California’s state reptile, including closely monitoring and relocating tortoises.
1. Weight: Height: Lifespan: Diet: fate.
By February 2011, all parties realized that the site contained more tortoises than allowed under the permit. Two months later, state and federal agencies ordered construction suspended until a new biological assessment could be completed.
When BLM officials inquired about the slow pace of the work, Amy Fesnock, BLM’S lead biologist for endangered species, sent an email up the BLM food chain stating that many requests for data were apparently being ignored by Brightsource.
Referring to Brightsource Energy by the shorthand BSE, Fesnock wrote, “The ‘crisis’ that this project is in is purely of BSE’S making. If we continue to reward their bad behavior — contorting ourselves to solve the problems that they keep creating, we have no hope of them not creating a new problem for us to solve.”
Fesnock told The Times recently that her issues with former Brightsource project managers had been resolved and called the work of the company’s biologists “phenomenal.”
At Ivanpah today, 166 adult and juvenile tortoises have been collected and moved to a nine-acre holding facility. The objective is to release them into the “wild,” on the other side of the fence from the solar facility. Tools of survival
Desert tortoises were not always so scarce. They thrived in a harsh environment with the few tools nature provided.
To ward off predators, they spritz pungent bladder contents around their burrows, where they spend as much as 95% of their lives. When tortoises hear thunder — signaling a desert storm — they come topside and lower the side of their shells like bulldozer blades to gouge out water catchments. They can increase their body mass by 30% to 40% by guzzling water in this way, a quenching that can sustain them for more than two years without another drop.
The animals were once so abundant that Southern Californians used to bring the small ones home from desert trips as souvenirs, and the animals lived quiet lives in suburban backyards.
Once the tortoise was added to the endangered species list in 1990, however, a reverse diaspora occurred. Panicked moms and dads streaked back to the Mojave to release the now-protected tortoise. The story does not end there, nor does it end well. The former captives brought with them disease that spread and killed tortoises across the Mojave.
About the same time, desert recreation increasingly began to include off-road vehicles, which crushed either the animals or their burrows. The dust kicked up by the machines exacerbated the animal’s propensity for upper respiratory infections.
As Southern California’s exurbs marched east, trash dumps came with them, bringing ravens — one of the tortoise’s most effective predators. Finally, roadways crossing the desert to connect population centers and provide for recreation along the Colorado River laid down an asphalt moat that, as much as anything, defined the new de facto tortoise habitat.
Brightsource’s difficulties with the tortoise raise hackles among people who believe government protections afforded to animals are too extreme. Even before solar power entered the picture, state