Gentleman and Arizona tortoise

In common restaurants, we can see one spoon, two forks, and one knife in order on the table and if you are a gentle businessman, you use your right hand to cut meat and your left hand to stick or hold the meat when dining across from an important buyer. It can be etiquette to keep your buyers continually. Like this, it is also easy to be a gentleman in the Arizona desert. In this article, “Protecting the tortoises Etiquette: stressed in wake of fires, drought”, the author, Brian Passey, tells about humans’ simple etiquette and the fact that the public should be educated about desert tortoises to protect the species against terrible wildfires and severe drought. Lori Rose, a county biologist for the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, advises us about some rules to be gentlemen in the desert. There are the following things: don’t touch tortoises in any cases; be careful in a making trails not to disturb tortoises; don’t bring your dog close to tortoise; don’t take them as a pets; and interact with them when they have trouble. Marshall Topham, assistant superintendent for Washington County School District, tells that despite of inconvenience, we should help the threatened animals.

Adding to the thought of this author, I think we should make a more active effort against tortoise’s extinction in three ways as well as the simple effort like above.

First, we should artificially make reserve for desert tortoises and take care of them there in order to make them flourish, because they gradually are losing their habitat because of severe desertification and wildfire. According to an article, “Sloooow recovery: 37 endangered tortoises move to N.M., where biologists hope their population will be boosted”, 37 endangered tortoises were moved from Arizona to New Mexico by humans’ hand directly with biologists’ hope that they would thrive. At Ted Turner’s Armendaris Ranch, a home to endangered species in New Mexico, the tortoises were carefully treated and protected as a threatened species and were examined as specimens for research about endangered desert tortoises. Moreover, researchers at Turner’s Ranch are also going to build a special facility to protect young tortoises until they grow enough at some place near the ranch. Like this, by making a habitat for them actively and artificially, we should protect them against extremely sad disasters like wildfire and drought that drive them into extinction.

Second, we should improve the environment of the desert as much as possible despite terrible obstacles like desertification, wildfire, and drought. According to a first article that I mentioned above and another article entitled, “Wildfires, weeds hurt desert tortoise habitat”, there are two reasons for the drought and severe wildfire: the shortage of water, and the highly flammable grass or weed, that make wildfire more severe, and we should treat these reasons well. Washington County naturally had wonderful habitats for desert tortoises in the Mojave range, because the region has received more rainfall than other regions. This means that even though they are desert life that lives in severe dry desert, they also need water. Therefore, we should artificially supply water to the place where the tortoises live as much as possible. It could be to make artificial rainfall by using the modern technology and even regular and periodic helicopters. To stop wildfires from getting power, we should also remove the non-native and invasive cheat grass or weed that makes the wildfire get worse. We artificially not only should replant native plants that may been eaten by the tortoises, but also, with herbicides, get rid of non-native plants that kill the tortoises.

Finally, we should try to make stronger laws systematically to punish tortoise hunters and smugglers, because they have smuggled the desert tortoises to other countries for economic purpose illegally. Actually, it’s not a enormous impact on the ecology of desert tortoises that some people take desert tortoises as a pets and bring them home as the first article above mentioned, whereas the tortoise hunters or smugglers surely make big problems over the ecosystem of desert tortoises. In one article, “Two indicted in tortoise smuggling; A Diamond Bar man allegedly sold the endangered reptiles shipped from Asia”, Scott Flaherty, the California officer of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said smuggling reptiles is a worldwide problem (Blankstein, 2007). It means that many tortoises have gone abroad and other reptiles have come to the U.S. So, these unnatural shifts finally will cause severe imbalance of the ecosystem of the Arizona desert, because many tortoises in Arizona are captured by hunters or smugglers for illegal global trade. To save tortoises, stronger law, related to smuggling, must be written and the law should be considered with economic, social, and ecological aspects.

The desert tortoise in Arizona is like our buyer, if we think of humans as our company. If we want our company to progress continually and healthily, we should treat our buyer well and be a gentleman who keeps etiquette for the buyer. Moreover, adding to this, we should make some effort actively and artificially to maintain the good relationship between the company and the buyer, like the relationship between the humans and tortoises, making reserve for them, taking care of them, changing the environment of the desert into the heaven for tortoises, and making critical laws against tortoise hunters and smugglers. Fortunately, we can still be a more active gentlemen of the Arizona desert despite many obstacles, if we believe in humans’ amazing ability.

Reference:

Blankenstein, A. (2007, May 18). Two indicted in tortoise smuggling; A Diamond Bar man allegedly sold the endangered reptiles shipped from Asia. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 4, 2007, from LexisNexis.

Passey, B. (2006, August 2). Protecting the tortoises: Etiquette stressed in wake of fires, drought. The Associated Press State & Local Wire. Retrieved May 31, 2007, from LexisNexis.

Rogers, K. (2007, February 24). Wildfires, weeds hurt desert tortoise habitat. Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved May 31, 2007, from LexisNexis.

Soussan, T. (2006, December 26). Sloooow recovery; 37 endangered tortoises move to N.M., where biologists hope their population will be boosted. Albuquerque Journal. Retrieved May 31, 2007, from LexisNexis.