'Mojave Max' emerges early

By Ken Ritter

The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - Southern Nevada's answer to Pennsylvania's prognosticating groundhog emerged Monday from a burrow at a desert preserve, picking Valentine's Day for his earliest seasonal debut.

Mojave Max, a desert tortoise that biologists think is 30 to 50 years old, stepped out just before noon on a relatively warm and moist day - raising eyebrows among scientists looking for signs of global warming, and dashing hopes among teachers hoping for a drawn-out countdown to focus the attention of schoolchildren on desert wildlife and conservation.

"On average, you find tortoises coming out in the middle of March," said Ron Marlow, a University of Nevada, Reno, biologist who studies Max and his threatened species in the deserts around Las Vegas.

"Everybody is looking for evidence of global climate change," Marlow said. "This is evidence of at least local change, but it's very short-term."

Max usually lives a sedentary life munching desert flowers, shrubs and cactus shoots before bedding down for winter in a burrow at the Bureau of Land Management's Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, 20 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.

The 15-pound tortoise usually sleeps through Feb. 2, when the eyes of a winter-weary Easterners turn to Punxsutawney, Pa., and the shadow of a groundhog named Phil for a sign that spring might be near. Max backers aren't as positive in their prognostications.

"This is not supposed to mean anything in particular about what spring is going to be like," said Betty Burge, chairwoman of the Tortoise Group, a conservation advocacy group.

in Las Vegas. "It's just exciting because we don't know when tortoises are going to wake up."

Longer days, more sunlight and the tortoise's internal clock generally point to a change of season, said Christina Gibson, a Clark County spokeswoman monitoring a contest to pick the date Max emerges.

"We do use it as an indicator of spring," she said.

Gibson said the tortoise poked his head out of his burrow Jan. 26, but didn't come all the way out. His earliest previous appearance was last year on Feb. 19. His latest, March 22, 2002.

No one really knows what makes tortoises emerge from the reptilian form of hibernation. Officials think unusually wet weather and an extraordinary bloom of desert wildflowers might be giving Max the munchies.

Red Rock Canyon has received 4.18 inches of rain for the first six weeks of 2005 - already exceeding its yearly average.

"We have an idea Max wakes up when it gets warmer and when days get longer," Gibson said. "Certainly, he's sensing the flowers."

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On the Net:

Mojave Max Environmental Education Programs: www.mojavemax.com