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Coachella Valley
Fringe- Toed Lizard
What's Threatening My Friends and I?
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The Coachella Valley is known for its beautiful landscapes, which mostly consists of vast dunes and sand that cover the desert. However, because of many human activities like agriculture, development of subdivisions, and construction of railroads and highways, these poor lizards are losing their habitat because we’re impacting their resources(cite). Not only are corporations building on the Coachella Valley land, many companies are using the sand for large-scale construction or agricultural projects, and taking the most important part of the lizards homes away! Without sand, the Coachella Valley lizards cannot live happily in their environment, and more importantly the lizards will live their lives in fear because they have nowhere to burrow in the sand from predators. :( We have to assure the lizards that we will help them find shelter and safety before all of their sand is gone!
construction of California highway
Let The Desert Be!
Popular music festivals such as Coachella, where thousands of people attend, take place within the Uma Inortatas habitat. Due to the price of tickets and meals many attendees choose to camp out for 3 weekends and sometimes longer than the duration of the festival. It may be cheaper to camp but what festival-goers don’t know is that they are running over the fringe toed lizard (literally) as they head off the paved roads and onto the sandy desert floor to their campsite. Off-road vehicle use is a major threat to the lizard’s already shrinking population (Uma, 2012). The campers continue to be careless as they disrespect the valley. The filth and garbage discarded by festival attendees and campers later becomes scattered all across Coachella Valley, with no one to clean it up. Most of it ends up melting into the valley floor and can be mistaken as food among the animals, causing severe health effects, and sometimes even killing the animals. Despite all of this, these festivals occur annually, deteriorating the genetic diversity of Coachella Valley.. home to the beautiful lizard.
Coachella campground
If I Lose Sand I Lose Life!
Due to the fact that the Uma Inortata’s land is limited to the Coachella valley, their survival is even more critical. Their “blowsand” habitat is changing to become unfit, their sand won’t stay the same! Invasive or exotic plants, such as the Russian thistle, have killed off the shrub-like natives in the valley which makes the sand compact. That is leaving them vulnerable to predators because they rely on burrowing beneath the sand to hide. Their population will decline even more rapidly than it is now! If we don’t be proactive, they may disappear completely within 50 years (coachella, 2011).
Invasive species (Russian Thistle)
Sand Removal will be the death of me...
There are so many companies that work with sand making huge profits and bringing up controversy after controversy, and now it has reached the coachella valley! This lizard survives with sand, it is what makes it be able to get away from predators and play its role in the ecosystem of the coachella valley. It becomes a larger issue for the lizards survival when they are losing sand because companies want to expand. Along with the lizards not having enough sand, they have windbreaks which prevents the sand from being blown to provide cover for the lizard leaving it vulnerable to predators!
"blowsand" habitat
I'm Endangered!
On their own the uma inortata will struggle recovering from endangerment. Their fragile population has already begun isolating itself in corners of the Coachella Valley. One of their major issues is their very real possibility of habitat fragmentation which is bound to happen because they are failing to breed with others that aren’t living in their specific zone.Their foreseeable future will include the loss of genetic diversity. Unfortunately, through reproduction they only have 2-4 offspring, which does not show much promise to turning around their chance at surviving their current battles. (DeVos, 2018)
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