VIDEO

DESERT-DWELLING TORTOISES EPISODE CLIP

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Welcome to the Mojave Desert.

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This is the driest region in North America, and it's home to the highest recorded air temperature on Earth.

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It's also prime habitat to a remarkable species that made its first appearance on the Wild Kingdom way back in 1964.

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Of all the animals in the desert, the one animal that is most successful in surviving attacks by his enemies is the desert tortoise.

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Almost 60 years later, Dr. Rae and I have returned to pick up the trail where Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler left off here.

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We are so excited to be here at the Mojave Desert.

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I'm really excited too.

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You know, the Mojave Desert tortoise is considered a keystone species in the desert environment.

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They make these burrows that other animals use, so they're very, very useful.

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They're kind of ecosystem engineers and they serve a great purpose.

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And if you look at a place like this, you know, they are just masters of adaptation.

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Incredible heat and lack of water and food and predators.

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It's amazing they survive in this incredible climate at all.

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And they don't just survive.

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I mean, the Mojave Desert tortoise can live for decades, almost the same as a human lifetime.

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We've got to keep having them on the landscape.

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We've got to learn about them and educate ourselves, and maybe even have a little fun while we do it.

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Yeah, I think we will.

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Yeah, desert tortoises have been living in this region for over 30 million years.

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But in recent decades, widespread urbanization of the desert has radically changed this environment.

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Now, habitat loss, contact with transportation, and invasive predators are all causing the tortoise population to disappear.

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I love tortoises personally because they're incredible animals and they make me smile every time I see them.

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But a lot of people don't know that the population it's really imperiled and it's been declining steadily for the last 20 to 40 years.

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There are many separate threats, all of which are basically attributable to human activity and human decisions.

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Finding them in the wild is really hard.

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Finding them in the wild consistently is even harder.

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The desert tortoise is listed by the federal government as threatened that if we don't intervene, this species is probably going to go extinct.

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To help save them, conservation biologists around the Southwest have teamed up to give desert tortoises a fighting chance.

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Today we're meeting some of these scientists and our first stop requires military clearance.

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Edwards Air Force Base is the center of the aerospace testing universe.

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Everything that flies in the air, it's in.

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The Department of Defense for the most part, gets tested here first portions of the base are in critical tortoise habitat, and it's a huge area that's actually protected.

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It's not surprising that we will find wild tortoise is doing pretty well on this military installation.

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Hi there.

3:14
Hi, it's very nice to meet you.

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Yeah.

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Welcome to Edwards Air Force Base.

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At this facility we are head starting desert tortoises.

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Can we get a look at it?

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Yeah.

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Do you want to check it out?

3:25
Please.

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In partnership with San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, this Tortoise Head Start Program has a simple mission.

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Help protect and grow as many babies as possible.

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These pens are the temporary homes to dozens of wild mother tortoises, giving them a safe place to lay their eggs.

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Peter, would you like to see our adult tortoise pen?

3:49
Love to.

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Here's female FW8153.

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We're already on a first number basis.

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That's right.

3:56
That's right.

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How old is this one?

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We don't know.

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She's at least 20 years old.

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This female tortoise was radio tracked and found to have eggs in the field and was brought into our predator proof enclosures.

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To lay these eggs while I continue my tour of the enclosure.

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Melissa is taking Gray deep into the desert to find out where all of these mother tortoises came from.

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Our field team is tracking adult female tortoises in the desert.

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And these are wild female tortoises that we have put radio transmitters on.

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Hey, Reed.

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Oh, hi there.

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Hello.

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You must be our tracker.

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I am.

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What do you have for us here?

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So we found one of our adult females using our radio telemetry equipment.

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So glad we found her this morning.

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It looks like this tracker is actually like fixed to her body.

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So for these tortoises, we're able to attach the transmitter using a special putty epoxy.

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And then she also has a temperature logger.

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So it's recording a temperature every hour and there's a little chip on board that stores the data.

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Then we can go ahead and download it.

5:01
That is incredible.

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I mean, what a high tech tortoise she's, she's really tricked out.

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Lucky girl.

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Can you estimate her age at all?

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We know she's pretty old because as they age, they start to accumulate these growth rings on their scoots.

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Kind of like tree rings on a tree.

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The fact that hers are almost all worn away because she's a pretty old girl, I wouldn't say she's like over 50, at least.

5:25
Oh, my goodness.

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Good for her.

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All right, now that we've found this healthy female, Melissa wants to know if she's pregnant.

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How can we tell if she's got some eggs for us?

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Well, it's kind of crazy, but we actually bring an X-ray machine to the field.

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Wow.

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How exactly does this work?

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This is a really cool system that wirelessly bluetooth connects to the laptop.

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OK, so we have the little container that will hold our female tortoise, and then this is the actual X-ray right here in this box, right?

5:55
OK, simple enough.

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All right, so instantly we're getting the images.

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Wait, I can tell already those are eggs 12345.

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Am I getting that right?

6:07
That's correct.

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Wow, Mama, congratulations.

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Isn't that cool?

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Female tortoises lay an average of 4 to 8 eggs each season, and every single one of them is critical to growing the desert population.

We may be ready to race into new episodes of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, but our first featured animal likes to take things slow … really slow. That’s just life as a tortoise!

Watch Peter and Dr. Rae travel to the Mojave Desert, the driest region of North America, to help conservationists save the Mojave desert tortoise. With special access to Edwards Air Force Base, they explore a groundbreaking program that head-starts baby tortoises and ensures the survival of the entire species. Along the way, they discover the desert tortoise’s most dangerous and most intelligent natural predator: the raven. Peter and Dr. Rae work alongside biologists and engineers who are fighting to contain the raven problem and bring balance back to the Mojave ecosystem.

Go behind the scenes of this episode by learning what it was like to film in the Mojave Desert.

And watch the story of the Mojave desert tortoise in the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild episode, “Desert-Dwelling Tortoises.” Check your local NBC listings for your airtime.

Can’t watch live? No sweat! You can stream the episode free on NBC.com.

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