BLM is claiming over $1 million in past fees.
After 20 years with no serious effort to collect, hasn’t the BLM abandoned its rights? Were the fees agreed upon or merely imposed?
After 20 years is there a count on how many tortoises met a bovine death? Any evidence?
And what about the BLM round up of tortoises elsewhere to a central collection point where they had to put nearly 1,000 todeath because of disease...and then later abandoned the whole project.
Inquiring minds want to know.
The tortoises thrived with the cattle grazing. They love the bovine scat. The digestive system of cattle is not super efficient, so there is a lot of nourishment left laying there on the ground. Removing the cattle will be very bad for the tortoise population, and the government is counting on the ignorance of most city people who think less cattle equals more tortoises.
Also, it's not been widely reported the government is slaughtering hundreds of Desert Tortoises because of the shutdown of a preserve.