Native to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) once roamed all over the vast Mojave and Sonoran deserts, marking the landscape with their distinctive dark brown and greenish-tan shells. Unfortunately for the species' long-term survival, human beings have been destroying their habitat in a number of ways, from paving new roads and operating military bases to constructing utility plants and grazing livestock.

The animals are also vulnerable to a range of deadly diseases such as upper respiratory illnesses and the shell disease cutaneous dyskeratosis, which softens their shells. Finally, as climate change worsens heat waves and intensified wildfires, desert tortoises suffer disproportionately.

If their population continues to decline at this precipitous rate, the desert tortoise will soon go extinct. That is why people like Kelly Herbinson, executive director of the Mojave Desert Land Trust (MDLT), agree with the recent decision to upgrade their conservation status from "threatened" to "endangered."

"Species like the desert tortoise play an important role in the health of the desert ecosystem," Herbinson said. "They are a keystone species, meaning if they were to be removed from the ecosystem, we would see a cascade of ecological effects — an unbalancing."

Once the desert tortoise is lost, it will be easier for invasive and highly flammable plant species to prevail and cause chaos, such as the red brome (Bromus madritensis) and cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) that keep choking the desert to death. Wildfires could become more common, and the desert ecosystem overall may "even more wildly out of balance contributing to our ecosystems not functioning in a way that maintains human life," Herbinson said.

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