Adaptively Managed Translocation and Propagation of Mohave Ground Squirrels
Project Update
Since the beginning of research in September of 2025, the project team has been working on finalizing contracts with collaborators and obtaining the necessary permits for capturing and housing Mohave Ground Squirrels (MGS). The team is also in the process of ordering supplies needed for trapping. The team at The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens is preparing the enclosures that will house MGS. Trapping of animals for both translocation and propagation will be conducted in May 2026.
The Issue
Solar energy development can impact wildlife species primarily through direct mortality or by reducing habitat quantity and quality. For species of conservation concern, including state- or federally-listed species, there are legal obligations to mitigate these impacts. The MGS is a state-threatened species with a small geographic distribution and a highly restricted activity period. Threats to MGS include anthropogenic habitat destruction and fragmentation, especially from renewable energy development, climate change, and acute sustained drought. Thus, developing management tools to mitigate these threats, including protocols for effective relocation from disturbed sites, such as solar facilities, to undisturbed sites protected from development, is critical to MGS conservation and will reduce impacts to energy generation and to ratepayers.
Project Innovation
The purpose of this Agreement is to fund adaptively managed programs that will test protocols for translocation and propagation of MGS that are currently located on lands proposed for renewable energy development. These programs will result in final protocols that will describe the most effective methods for relocating MGS from disturbed areas. Currently there are no tested protocols available to relocate MGS successfully from solar facilities, thus affecting the sensitive species population and range. This approach focuses on reducing negative impacts on MGS populations, therefore reducing obstacles to future renewable energy development.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
This Project will have benefits to both MGS populations and to ratepayers. Benefits to MGS populations include increased chances of survival of individuals that are relocated from renewable energy projects, thus reducing negative impacts on their populations and contributing to the long-term persistence of the species. Ratepayer benefits will include greater electricity reliability and lower costs linked to renewable energy production by reducing the need for costly approaches to environmental management, thus speeding time to completion of solar facilities (reliability), and streamlining environmental permitting and compliance for renewable energy development and production (costs). Federal- and state-driven environmental mandates are a major source of uncertainty that causes slowdowns or stoppages of energy development projects. By reducing the uncertainty associated with conservation management of this state-threatened species, this Project will benefit ratepayers who would otherwise see less quantity and slower speed of renewable energy development.
Affordability
The ability to efficiently relocate MGS away from energy projects will lower the costs of environmental management.
Reliability
Effective methods of MGS relocation will speed the time to completion of renewable energy facilities.
Key Project Members
Subrecipients
Match Partners
