Saving Florida's Gopher Tortoises

By Jennifer Hobgood

The gopher tortoise is a burrowing turtle found only in the southeastern United States. Encountering the half-moon-shaped, sandy opening of a gopher tortoise burrow in the wild may inspire images of hobbits and gnomes—but the reality these gentle creatures have faced in recent years is more horror than fantasy.

Although gopher tortoises are threatened with extinction, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission allows developers to purchase "incidental take"—called "pay-and-bury" by some—permits to kill gopher tortoises rather than move them out of harm's way. It's estimated that more than 94,000 tortoises have been crushed or buried alive by construction equipment since 1991.

I have witnessed the reality of gopher tortoise incidental take. As bulldozers scrape away trees and plants, bloodied tortoises with cracked shells try to escape, pacing on the barren terrain amid the huge land-clearing machines. Some confused tortoises even try to dig burrows into the open, flattened wasteland. 

But the worst part is what we don't see—most of the tortoises stay underground and are entombed in burrows. Burial alive is a particularly horrible death for tortoises: Their slow metabolic rate means that they suffer for months as they gradually suffocate, dehydrate, and starve to death. 

Rescue and Relocation

There is some hope. In the fall of 2006, the Florida Fish and Wildlife agency responded to The Humane Society of the United States' request to develop a Rescue Relocation policy that would enable citizens to work with developers who hold "incidental take" permits but do not wish to kill gopher tortoises. We began last November by joining with local conservation and humane groups to relocate 46 tortoises.

Saving Tortoises in St. Johns County

This year, The HSUS and Nokuse Plantation—a non-profit conservation wilderness in Northwest Florida—negotiated with a developer in St. Johns County near St. Augustine to relocate an estimated 500 tortoises. Nokuse offered the tortoises a permanently protected home, and The HSUS agreed to transport the tortoises from the development site to Nokuse, six hours away.

The Delicate Process of Uncovering Burrows

The St. Johns County tortoise relocation project began on May 16, and took more than six weeks. Because gopher tortoise burrows can reach more than 18 feet in depth and may follow unpredictable patterns, excavations are delicate and time consuming. As a ground crew tracks the path of the burrow, a trained backhoe operator slowly removes thin layers of earth. When the crew approaches the burrow's end chamber, the final layers of soil are dug away by hand. The anticipation is palpable. 

The HSUS

A gopher tortoise is released in his new home at Nokuse Plantation.

Many of the St. Johns County tortoise burrows were deeper than average, and this one was no exception. When we dusted the final layer of sand from the grey-black shell of an adult male tortoise, I realized that we were taking him from what had been the only home he'd known for the 30-50 years he'd been alive.

I looked up from a depth of 15 feet to the place where the burrow's opening had been, and I pictured the tens of thousands of other tortoises in the state who had been buried alive.

When the trucks and bulldozers rumbled onto their wilderness home, they would have run for the safety of their burrows. As the machines ripped out trees and compacted the soil, the tortoises would have waited, ensconced in their once-safe chambers until sunlight no longer filtered into their burrows and the darkness was uninterrupted. Periodically, perhaps in the early morning hours when the machines had shut down and all was quiet, they would have tried to climb out of their burrows until they could not dig further. Their burrows would be partially collapsed, and the tortoises would have nowhere to kick out the dirt as they had done when they created their homes. Other than these intermittent vain attempts over the course of several months, perhaps as long as a year, they could only slide back into their chambers and wait for death.

The beautiful male gopher tortoise in front of me that day, and the hundreds of other tortoises at the St. Johns County site, will not be subjected to such suffering. I imagine them and their offspring, with a lifespan of 80-100 years, surviving for centuries after I am gone. 

On June 5, we started our next project, relocating 200-250 tortoises in Seminole County to Nokuse. I spent all day on the magnificent landscape with the biggest tortoises I've ever seen. It was a day of mixed emotion for me—guilt at taking these ancient, huge tortoises from the only home they've ever known and relief that they would be safe in a new home though the habitat of their natural community has been destroyed.

Jennifer Hobgood is a regional coordinator for the Humane Society of the United States Southeast Regional Office.