TALLAHASSEE, Fla.— The International Union for Conservation of Nature has published a new assessment that revises the gopher tortoise’s status from “vulnerable” to “critically endangered” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The tortoise’s critically endangered status indicates it is facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild, given current knowledge about its population trends, and recent, current or future threats.
The assessment is based on the best available science and estimates that gopher tortoise populations have declined by approximately 80% over the past 120 years — just three tortoise generations. The assessment cites research that predicts 69%-91% additional future declines over the next two generations. Currently, there are no monitored populations that have increasing population growth rates.
Gopher tortoises face a variety of threats that have driven these dramatic declines. Habitat destruction has reduced the tortoise’s longleaf pine habitat to less than 3% of its original extent. The threats driving tortoise declines and habitat destruction are not expected to abate in the future. Rather, they are getting worse.
“Gopher tortoises are a very important species throughout the Southeast, and I am concerned about the connectedness and viability of their populations in the future,” said Leyna Stemle, Ph.D., a coauthor of the revised assessment. “The tortoises’ burrows support hundreds of other species that may depend on the burrow for their survival, such as gopher frogs. Their populations are becoming more and more fragmented, as well as smaller, due to habitat fragmentation and loss with growing human populations and urbanization in the Southeast. This fragmentation leads to threats on long term viability of populations.”
“The majority of the ongoing conservation of gopher tortoise populations in the Southeast relies on translocation programs that remove tortoises from their burrows prior to development and relocates them, sometimes hundreds of miles away, to new locations. Unfortunately, these programs are often haphazard with little to no follow up on the survivorship of those individuals,” said Hunter Howell, Ph.D., a coauthor of the revised assessment. “Despite there being dozens of both translocated and natural populations studied across the species’ range, scientists have never recorded a single population with a positive population growth rate.”
“In addition to outright habitat loss is the insidious consequence of lack of active management of tortoise habitat,” said Tracey Tuberville, Ph.D., a gopher tortoise researcher in the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. “Neglected habitats can quickly become unsuitable for gopher tortoises. However, the long lag time between habitat deterioration and tortoises abandoning sites or becoming locally extirpated can mask the devastating consequences of habitat neglect.”
The gopher tortoise’s status was last updated 30 years ago in 1996, when it was assessed as vulnerable. Its new critically endangered status lands it in the company of other acutely imperiled species on the IUCN Red List, including the North Atlantic right whale, red wolf and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.
In 2023 the Center for Biological Diversity and Nokuse Education, Inc. sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for denying federal Endangered Species Act protections to the majority of gopher tortoises, including those living in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and most of Alabama. The groups argued that the decision was arbitrary and departed from the best available science about the tortoise’s status and threats.
“It’s time for federal wildlife officials to reconsider their decision to deny Endangered Species Act protections to gopher tortoises across their range,” said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s no time to lose. It will only become more difficult to pull these charming creatures back from the brink of extinction the longer they go without the protection they so desperately need.”
“It is not surprising to me that gopher tortoise populations continue to decline given the rapid pace of habitat loss and the difficulty in maintaining viable populations,” said Matt Aresco, Ph.D., biologist and board member at Nokuse Education, Inc. “Relocation has proven to be an inadequate mitigation method and state and federal regulators must prioritize keeping large, self-sustaining populations protected and well-managed on both public and private lands if the gopher tortoise will have any chance of persisting in the future.”
The conservation organizations highlighted significant flaws in a gopher tortoise population model that the Fish and Wildlife Service relied upon. Despite a recently published scientific review detailing numerous flaws in the agency’s analysis, the Service has not reconsidered its decision.
“The gopher tortoise deserves re-evaluation for federal listing based on an updated, unbiased population model in light of the documented problems in the 2021 Species Status Assessment model,” said Kevin Loope, Ph.D., a research scientist who studies the conservation biology of gopher tortoises and co-authored the scientific review. “This would not require starting the process again from scratch, but could build on the hard work done by the USFWS and others to evaluate this important species.”
“We have a tremendous opportunity to reverse these declines and restore large and genetically diverse gopher tortoise populations if we act quickly,” said Kevin Shoemaker, Ph.D., a research scientist who studies the conservation biology of gopher tortoises and co-authored the scientific review. “I hope this new ‘critically endangered’ designation galvanizes the conservation community to prioritize habitat protection and evidence-based management for this keystone species before our window of opportunity closes.”
To support gopher tortoise conservation, people can consider taking some of these actions:
Background
Gopher tortoises have shovel-like front legs and strong, thick back legs that help them dig deep burrows that more than 360 other species use. Gopher tortoise burrows are considered key features in the large, unfragmented upland ecosystems these communities of wild animals need to survive. Gopher tortoises also aerate soils when they dig burrows and increase plant diversity when they forage on plants and disperse their seeds. For these reasons, gopher tortoises are considered “keystone species” by scientists because they’re critical components of the ecosystems where they live.
Gopher tortoises have been impacted by a wide range of threats including habitat loss and fragmentation, predators, invasive species, disease, and exploitation. In recent decades, widespread threats like habitat loss and fragmentation have increased in severity due to increased urbanization and climate change.
Characteristics such as delayed sexual maturity, dependence on high adult survival rates and high levels of nest and hatchling mortality make gopher tortoises especially vulnerable to human-driven threats. The presence of long-lived adult tortoises can also mask serious population problems like reproduction declines or failure.
Gopher tortoises in limited parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and western Alabama are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. Those in eastern Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina have been waiting for federal protection since 1982.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global extinction risk status of animal, fungus and plant species. It is based on an objective system for assessing the risk of extinction of a species based on past, present, and projected threats, ensuring the highest standards of scientific documentation, information management, expert review, and justification.
The IUCN Red List divides species into nine categories: not evaluated, data deficient, least concern, near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the wild, and extinct. The IUCN aims to re-evaluate species’ statuses every five to 10 years to monitor change.
