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Welcome to the Mojave Desert.
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This is the driest region in North America, and it's home to the highest recorded air temperature on Earth.
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It's also prime habitat to a remarkable species that made its first appearance on the Wild Kingdom way back in 1964.
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Of all the animals in the desert, the one animal that is most successful in surviving attacks by his enemies is the desert tortoise.
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Almost 60 years later, Dr. Rae and I have returned to pick up the trail where Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler left off here.
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We are so excited to be here at the Mojave Desert.
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I'm really excited too.
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You know, the Mojave Desert tortoise is considered a keystone species in the desert environment.
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They make these burrows that other animals use, so they're very, very useful.
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They're kind of ecosystem engineers and they serve a great purpose.
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And if you look at a place like this, you know, they are just masters of adaptation.
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Incredible heat and lack of water and food and predators.
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It's amazing they survive in this incredible climate at all.
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And they don't just survive.
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I mean, the Mojave Desert tortoise can live for decades, almost the same as a human lifetime.
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We've got to keep having them on the landscape.
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We've got to learn about them and educate ourselves, and maybe even have a little fun while we do it.
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Yeah, I think we will.
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Yeah, desert tortoises have been living in this region for over 30 million years.
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But in recent decades, widespread urbanization of the desert has radically changed this environment.
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Now, habitat loss, contact with transportation, and invasive predators are all causing the tortoise population to disappear.
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I love tortoises personally because they're incredible animals and they make me smile every time I see them.
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But a lot of people don't know that the population it's really imperiled and it's been declining steadily for the last 20 to 40 years.
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There are many separate threats, all of which are basically attributable to human activity and human decisions.
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Finding them in the wild is really hard.
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Finding them in the wild consistently is even harder.
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The desert tortoise is listed by the federal government as threatened that if we don't intervene, this species is probably going to go extinct.
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To help save them, conservation biologists around the Southwest have teamed up to give desert tortoises a fighting chance.
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Today we're meeting some of these scientists and our first stop requires military clearance.
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Edwards Air Force Base is the center of the aerospace testing universe.
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Everything that flies in the air, it's in.
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The Department of Defense for the most part, gets tested here first portions of the base are in critical tortoise habitat, and it's a huge area that's actually protected.
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It's not surprising that we will find wild tortoise is doing pretty well on this military installation.
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Hi there.
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Hi, it's very nice to meet you.
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Yeah.
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Welcome to Edwards Air Force Base.
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At this facility we are head starting desert tortoises.
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Can we get a look at it?
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Yeah.
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Do you want to check it out?
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Please.
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In partnership with San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, this Tortoise Head Start Program has a simple mission.
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Help protect and grow as many babies as possible.
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These pens are the temporary homes to dozens of wild mother tortoises, giving them a safe place to lay their eggs.
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Peter, would you like to see our adult tortoise pen?
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Love to.
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Here's female FW8153.
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We're already on a first number basis.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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How old is this one?
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We don't know.
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She's at least 20 years old.
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This female tortoise was radio tracked and found to have eggs in the field and was brought into our predator proof enclosures.
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To lay these eggs while I continue my tour of the enclosure.
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Melissa is taking Gray deep into the desert to find out where all of these mother tortoises came from.
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Our field team is tracking adult female tortoises in the desert.
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And these are wild female tortoises that we have put radio transmitters on.
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Hey, Reed.
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Oh, hi there.
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Hello.
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You must be our tracker.
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I am.
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What do you have for us here?
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So we found one of our adult females using our radio telemetry equipment.
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So glad we found her this morning.
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It looks like this tracker is actually like fixed to her body.
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So for these tortoises, we're able to attach the transmitter using a special putty epoxy.
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And then she also has a temperature logger.
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So it's recording a temperature every hour and there's a little chip on board that stores the data.
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Then we can go ahead and download it.
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That is incredible.
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I mean, what a high tech tortoise she's, she's really tricked out.
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Lucky girl.
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Can you estimate her age at all?
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We know she's pretty old because as they age, they start to accumulate these growth rings on their scoots.
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Kind of like tree rings on a tree.
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The fact that hers are almost all worn away because she's a pretty old girl, I wouldn't say she's like over 50, at least.
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Oh, my goodness.
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Good for her.
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All right, now that we've found this healthy female, Melissa wants to know if she's pregnant.
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How can we tell if she's got some eggs for us?
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Well, it's kind of crazy, but we actually bring an X-ray machine to the field.
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Wow.
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How exactly does this work?
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This is a really cool system that wirelessly bluetooth connects to the laptop.
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OK, so we have the little container that will hold our female tortoise, and then this is the actual X-ray right here in this box, right?
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OK, simple enough.
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All right, so instantly we're getting the images.
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Wait, I can tell already those are eggs 12345.
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Am I getting that right?
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That's correct.
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Wow, Mama, congratulations.
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Isn't that cool?
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Female tortoises lay an average of 4 to 8 eggs each season, and every single one of them is critical to growing the desert population.
