Biologists complete Ivanpah Solar Surveys and Construction Monitoring
Posted on Fri, Nov 11, 2011 @ 07:11 PM
Throughout the spring and fall of 2011, Rincon Consultants biologists were part of an intensive desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) surveying and monitoring effort for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project (ISEGS). ISEGS is located in the Ivanpah Valley, on the west side of I-15, near Primm, Nevada. The project area covers about 3,238 acres of BLM owned land, making it currently the largest solar facility in the world.
During construction, daily monitoring was conducted to minimize the potential for incidental take of desert tortoise. Monitoring tasks included the inspection of exclusion fence lines, monitoring of equipment, and surveying lay down areas or any other areas that could be a potential hazard to desert tortoise.
Rincon staff also participated in protocol level desert tortoise surveys to meet additional requirements of the Biological Opinion. Also, since the tortoises found on site will be translocated to offsite suitable habitat areas, the USFWS required further study of the drivers of post-translocation survival. For this study, Rincon biologists assisted in surveys at two sites, a recipient site (where ISEGS tortoises would be moved to) and a control site (where baseline information was gathered to compare to the recipient sites). Over the next five to ten years the project biologists will use radio telemetry to track translocated, resident and control tortoises. With data collected on movements, home ranges, habitat characteristics, disease prevalence, and survival, the resident and control populations will be compared with that of the translocated tortoises to evaluate the overall success of the translocation program.
Click here to watch a video highlighting the project: http://ivanpahsolar.com/ivanpahs-first-translocated-tortoise