HOW TORTOISE GROUP HELPS

 Unlawful collecting (poaching) of wild, protected tortoises continues. We are trying to stop poaching by providing an alternative. We offer homeless pet tortoises for adoption, free, to residents of Nevada.

Quality of life of pet tortoises is of great concern to us. Tortoises are easy to neglect and abuse.  All the love in the world won’t keep a tortoise healthy unless the owner provides proper food and housing. Deformities and deficiencies tend to be unrecognized by many owners until too late, when the tortoise dies or suffers months or years of ill health caused by improper care.  Among the most common problems are the results of diets that are deficient in vital nutrients offered to all sizes of tortoises, and keeping hatchling and juvenile tortoises indoors. Your free access to the Tortoise Group pamphlet, Desert Tortoises, Adoption and Care, available from our Home page, will go a long way to prevent or correct many problems. 

American box turtles are sometimes available for adoption and they are free.  Adopting from us instead of a pet shop saves a lot of box turtles from death. Not only does it slow the reordering by pet shops from collectors of wild turtles, it also decreases the number of collected turtles from becoming ill or dying from the inhumane conditions in which they tend to be kept between the time they are collected and offered for sale.  

The information given by pet shop staff usually includes keeping these turtles indoors in an aquarium.  Box turtles should live outside with plenty of room to move about.  The exploitation of free-living box turtles is of great concern to us. Their numbers in the wild have been greatly reduced.   

We helped Clark County with the development of their Desert Conservation Plan and the monitoring of the implementation of that plan.  In August 1989, the Mojave Desert Population of the desert tortoise, Gopherus agassizii, was added to the federal list of threatened and endangered species. From that time until June 2003, a Tortoise Group representative was among advisors to Clark County, Nevada, as the Desert Conservation Program was developed and implementation started.   In addition, Tortoise Group was active in the Public Information and Education Committee within the Conservation Program. Tortoise Group continues to contribute to that education effort.  Click Connections, below, for local and desert-wide sources of information about conservation, education, law enforcement, and other organizations involved with tortoises.  

Marking your Tortoise is very important. Tens of pet tortoises are lost each year, having escaped from unsecured yards.  Concerned owners call us and we find out that almost all the missing tortoises have not been marked externally. A phone number is usually all that is needed. We provide information for you to affix the number in a harmless way.  See Information Sheets #5 (below), and also the photo on the last page of the Adoption and Care Pamphlet.  We can also insert a microchip that will identify your tortoise using a scanner. The microchip and/or number tag may mean the difference between your missing tortoise being returned or not.  

Never drill holes through the shell. There are nerves and blood vessels under the entire shell.  Drilling causes pain and serves no purpose. A tortoise must never be tethered. Never cover the shell with paint or similar material. If you have a tortoise with a painted shell, do not try to remove the paint.  The solvents or scraping can hurt the tortoise.  Wait and the paint will eventually wear off.