Plenty spent on endangered species list's tortoise

SALT LAKE CITY — Leathery, shy and a bit world-weary, the Mojave desert tortoise doesn't come across as a high-roller.

But among land-going critters on the endangered species list, it's among the top recipients of money spent by state and federal agencies trying to keep it from the brink of extinction, according to an Associated Press analysis of the last 11 years of available data.

From 1996 to 2006, more than $93 million was spent on managing the long-lived reptile, records show. That's more than was spent on other species such as the grizzly bear, gray wolf or bald eagle.

Not bad for a pokey desert dweller that spends most of its time in underground burrows in parts of Utah, California, Arizona and Nevada.

Not that preserving the tortoise is simple.

The tortoise's "critical habitat" stretches across 9,600 square miles. Jurisdictions include four states, seven military installations, four national parks and scores of federal, state and county agencies.

Add to that a long list of threats, from highways, urbanization and wildfires to disease, off-road vehicles and climate change.

"We don't have a good silver bullet for the tortoise," said Roy Averill-Murray, desert tortoise recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Reno, Nev.

Congress in 1988 added a section to the Endangered Species Act requiring an annual species-by-species expenditure report. Before then, no one knew how much was being spent to save plants and animals on the list, said Valerie Fellows, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The reports are an attempt to calculate how much states and 31 federal agencies — from the Coast Guard to the Federal Highway Administration — are forking over for threatened and endangered species.

By far the top recipients have been salmon in the Pacific Northwest and the Steller sea lion. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on those species since reporting began in 1996.

The 2006 report, the latest released by the Fish and Wildlife Service, estimates that $884 million was spent on more than 1,100 species on the list.

There's a wide disparity in how money is doled out. The pallid sturgeon, a prehistoric-looking freshwater fish, topped the 2006 list with $39 million. A rare herb in Utah called the Barneby reed-mustard got just $6.