Something doesn´t sound right in here.
At the same time that the Feds are trying to save the Desert Tortoise, the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, with a budget of 1mil $ of tax payers money, is planning to euthanize hundreds of the critters...wtf?!
Of course that they invoke financial issues mainly the low income coming from the fees charged to the farmers. That doesn´t surprises me because it were those fees one the main cause to put most of the farmers out of work. And my guess is those were the only ones paying those fees.
This is just too confused for me, but that´s expected i´m just one uneducated foreigner.
Bingo. You appear to have a far better grasp of the situation than many of our US-born contributors.