The Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in Las Vegas says it must euthanize half of the endangered desert tortoises that it cares for as federal funding dries up.
The conservation center is a 220-acre holding and research facility that has been supported with funds from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), through fees from developers who have disturbed the tortoise's habitat on public lands (they have only collected $290,000 in the last year of their $1,000,000 annual need). With the BLM and local government running short on funds, the center is to be closed by the end of 2014.
Since the 1980s, habitat destruction, urbanization and disease resulted in the tortoise's numbers dwindling by 90 percent.
Please allow a private fundraising campaign to save the center!