The Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii; hereafter ‘tortoise’) is a federally threatened species experiencing a range of complex stressors, including habitat loss and fragmentation, predation, climate change, and off-highway vehicle use. To support prioritization and implementation of effective, spatially targeted conservation measures that can halt–and potentially reverse–population declines, CSP conducted a comprehensive, rangewide assessment of the cumulative impacts of stressors on tortoise populations. Some of these stressors–and the management decisions intended to address them–can be polarizing. To better understand how the public perceives the tortoise and how outreach efforts shape those perceptions, our team at CSP partnered with the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens to analyze online conversations about the species. Analyses of rangewide demography were supported by DoD’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.
CSP researchers joined scientists, land managers, and other conservation professionals at The Desert Tortoise Council 51st Annual Symposium held in Las Vegas, Nevada, to share the results of these two exciting new analyses. CSP scientist Madi Standen presented results of a multi-disciplinary, integrated approach to stressor quantification and tortoise survival estimation that synthesized diverse demographic datasets spanning more than 50 years. She also previewed a new, web-based tool developed by CSP for exploring trends in survival and stressor exposure across the species range. CSP data scientist Mae Lacey presented the results of an analysis examining the relationship between online sentiment toward the Mojave desert tortoise and outreach efficacy using natural language processing. Leveraging a rich dataset of social media posts (tweets) and online news articles, the team applied AI-based, natural language processing (NLP) techniques to evaluate both sentiment and dominant narratives surrounding the tortoise and provide a set of outreach best practices informed by our results.
Both of these projects included first-of-its-kind analyses. Publications from each of these efforts are in progress and will be posted here soon!
Madi Standen (L) and Mae Lacey (R ) presenting at The Desert Tortoise Council 51st Annual Symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada, February 2026.