West Mojave Plan FEIR/S - Desert Managers Group

Occurrence of Tortoises Relative to Higher Density Sign Count Areas: Much of thepreceding discussion relies on the assumption that relatively more tortoises are found in higherdensity sign count areas. One test of this assumption is to see what percentage of the tortoisesobserved during recent surveys occurred in these areas. Of the 275 tortoises observed during signcount surveys, UTM coordinates were available for only 261. Of these 261 tortoises, 101 (39%)were found within the higher density areas and 160 (61%) were found outside them, which isdepicted on Map 3-9.The comparison is more meaningful when the relative area of higher density and lowerdensity sign counts are compared to DWMA size. Within the three DWMAs (i.e., 2,147 mi 2excluding Pinto Mountain), there were 358 mi 2 (17% of the three DWMAs) of higher sign countareas and 1,789 mi 2 (83%) of lower sign count areas. Of the 261 tortoises, 101 (39%) werewithin higher sign count areas, compared to 160 (61%) lower sign count areas. One can see,then, that 39% of all tortoises were observed in 17% (i.e., higher density areas) of the threeDWMAs; the remaining 61% of all tortoises were in 83% (i.e., lower density areas) of the threeDWMAs. These findings suggest that tortoises are relatively concentrated in areas ofconcentrated sign counts.Locations of live tortoises, segregated into subadult (i.e.,