Agassiz's desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) ranges over approximately 24.5 million acres within the Mojave and Colorado deserts in southern California, southern Nevada, northwest Arizona, and southwest Utah. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages some 12.6 million acres of publicly-owned lands within this range; accordingly, the majority of appropriate conservation areas needed for the long-term viability of desert tortoise populations are located on federal lands managed by the BLM. Indeed, the BLM has played and will continue to play a major role in the perseverance of the species through their land management practices and implementation of conservation techniques--Page 1.