ABOUT
SAVING SLOWPOKE
Let's save our slowpokes together!
OUR HOPES AND
HISTORY.
The SSP team has a combined 65-years of experience and accumulated first-hand knowledge of the Desert Tortoise and of the Mojave Desert ecosystem. We have worked with and held positions with multiple conservation-based organizations and gained multiple years of experience with issues important to the preservation of the tortoise and the desert as a whole. Issues like:
-Conservation land management
-Off-highway vehicle contact and collaboration
-Endangered and sensitive species management
-Habitat Restoration and of course,
-The captive care of our beloved slowpoke, the desert tortoise.
HUMBLE
BEGINNINGS .
The idea of Saving Slowpoke began about a decade ago. Our family has always been in love with the Mojave and its inhabitants, particularly with the tortoise! We volunteered our time to community outreach in our home town of Barstow, California to try and show other people the awesome plants and animals our desert has to offer. We just wanted to share the discoveries we made throughout our lives with others because it changed our lives in the best possible way. It showed us that love wasn't just reserved for certain things but that we could fall in love with an idea, and the more we learned and understood about that idea, the more in love we fell. This idea of trying to get others to fall in love with conservation led us to what we consider our biggest passion, saving our desert’s icon, the Mojave Desert Tortoise.
THE GOAL .
Sure, we would love for everyone to love and appreciate the desert and the tortoise in the way we do. Unfortunately, we know that is a bit of a stretch. Everyone is different. We all come from different walks of life and have very different priorities. What we hope to do is meet folks half way, in hopes that they will do the same and walk with us in this fight for survival. We firmly believe that we must learn to share the desert. Human impacts like off-road recreation and even excessive eco-tourism are becoming more and more popular in our desert and as conservationists, we must learn to adapt to these changes. We believe that education, understanding and compromise is the way to accomplish this.
To quote the late Steve Irwin:
“If we can teach people about wildlife, they will be touched. Share my wildlife with me. Because humans want to save things that they love.”
Saving Slowpoke is a local desert tortoise advocacy group. We are not (yet) a 501c3 non-profit organization.
But we are working on it! Join our email list to find out when we make progress and to receive updates on events!
PROTECT OUR SLOWPOKES
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