Desert tortoises walk away from their eggs and never look back, leaving hatchlings to survive alone in one of the harshest ...

As monsoon rains bring much needed water to Arizona’s deserts, you may notice some of the state’s beloved shell-backed reptiles on the move. State wildlife officials have a message for those who may ...

These are our public lands. Protecting them should never require destroying the people who live on them, for a gesture that ...

A conservation story is giving people a rare dose of hope about the Sahara. Five hundred tortoises were released into a severely degraded part of the desert, and within five years, satellite imagery ...

A 3.5-million-acre swath of Mojave Desert between Ridgecrest and the Morongo Basin has received a new federal designation that advocates hope will help protect vulnerable wildlife like the Mojave ...

Spotting a Mojave Desert tortoise is increasingly difficult in the American Southwest. The tortoises, with their unmistakable domed patterned shells, live in California, parts of Nevada, Arizona and ...

What has four scaly legs and spends 90% of its life underground? It could be your new pet. The Arizona Game and Fish Department’s desert tortoise adoption program began last week with more than 300 ...

California’s Mojave Desert has become the backdrop of choice for many Instagram influencers who dig the aesthetics of Joshua trees and the otherworldly arid landscapes. Joshua Tree National Park now ...

Desert tortoises — the iconic reptile of the Mojave Desert — face plenty of dangers in the wild that scientists say pose long-term threats to the species: ravens, humans and climate change, to name a ...

Researchers are using a button-shaped device to gather data about desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) and their habitats in the Mojave Desert in Southern California. Using iButtons, the researchers ...

Behind the fences surrounding this 40-square-mile outback of cactus and wiry creosote, the largest remaining population of Mojave desert tortoises was soaking up the morning sun and grazing on a mix ...

The desert tortoise, a once-resilient reptile, is a keystone species in the Mojave Desert, where other animals depend for their survival on the burrows it digs. But it is imperiled in California ...