Desert Tortoise's Are Damn Expensive

Desert Tortoise's can be sold in pet stores. Desert Tortoise's can be someone's pet. But if you are an industry in Nevada and you might disturb a wild Desert tortoise, it will cost you thousands of dollars.

From the Pahrump Valley Times: Valley Electric Association officials were delighted when they finally received a right-of-way from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to build a new transmission line around the Spring Mountains and over public land.
It only took 10 years.
That’s the good news. Now comes the bad news.
Valley Electric Association paid $546,000 last month for desert tortoise mitigation on the new, 58-mile transmission line. VEA budgeted $3.6 million for mitigation for the entire project....

The mitigation fee dwarfs those paid by other developers.
Corrections Corporation of America paid $753 per acre for disturbing 69 acres for the federal detention center on East Mesquite Avenue. That amounted to $51,957.
The Nye County School District paid $623 per acre or $49,840 in desert tortoise mitigation fees for 80 acres at the Hafen Elementary School site...

“So there’s a lot of land there. This is a very sensitive tortoise area,” he said. “People are going to be shocked when they hear about the tortoises. Whether they agree or not, those are the rules today. We comply with the rules.”
There are some real consequences too, Husted said.
“If we don’t comply and we take a tortoise, the project is shut down,” he said.

http://pvtimes.com/news/vea-antes-up-546000-and-counting-for-mitigation/

While people can get tortoises for pets, businesses have to pay a fee for potentially distrubing an area where tortoise's roam.