LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – A Las Vegas nonprofit wants to stop the backyard breeding of tortoises.
Tortoise Group Board Chair, Laura Deitsch, says right now there are about 150,000 pet tortoises in the valley.
“That’s just a staggering number, if you think about it,” she says.
Deitsch says backyard breeding occurs when a male and female tortoise coexist in the same yard. She says they can produce more than 30 hatchlings in a single breeding season.
“They don’t need another tortoise. Everybody is like, ‘but they’re lonely’ and that’s us putting our personification onto a tortoise, they really do better by themselves,” Deitsch says.
If those hatchlings do come, she says the worst thing a tortoise owner can do is take them out to the desert.
“People think that they’re doing a good thing by replenishing the wild population, but it’s really dangerous,” Deitsch says.
She says tortoises are territorial, and each wild tortoise needs about a square acre to survive. But, it’s not only competition Deitsch worries about. She says captive tortoises commonly carry an upper respiratory tract disease that wild tortoises don’t.
“We don’t want that to get spread to the wild population,” she says.
People in need of help rehoming a tortoise can reach out to the nonprofit. It might make a pitstop at their Emergency Habitat, located in a private backyard in the northwest valley.
Each pen is equipped with water, native vegetation and a burrow. Deitsch says these are essentials for a healthy tortoise habitat.
Anyone interested in adopting a tortoise, or learning more about how to take care of them, can contact the nonprofit by clicking here.
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