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Show cft: r :n I 1 u f h i J v ,xW$v5S 'i -k fi Mj v-i -i Til SPSS' -Jl- i'lff " Calf Creek Falls is an oasis in the heart of Southern Utah's Color Country. It's an easy, 2 mile walk from the trailhead and BLM-administered campground to the 126-foot cascade. Nearby, the remote canyons ot the Escalante River are a backpackers' paradise. Desert I Tortoise rare I Visitors to the Beaver Dam Slope in extreme southwestern Utah experience ex-perience an environment found nowhere else in Utah. This area of Joshua trees, creosote bush, cholla, and barrel cactus contains one of Utah's rare and unusual wildlife species, the desert tortoise (Gopherus agas-sizii). agas-sizii). The Beaver Dam Slope is the northern-most range of the desert tortoise which is also found in the deserts of Nevada, California, Arizona and Sonora (Mexico). The tortoise deserves respect for merely surviving in this hostile environment. Severe conditions include long droughts, flash floods, large temperature fluctuations, fluc-tuations, extremely hot summers, and sparse vegetation. Through thousands of years the tortoise has adapted to life in the desert. Individuals mature between bet-ween twelve and eighteen years of age and some live fifty years or longer. A long life span is important because of the high mortality mor-tality of eggs and hatchlings. The shells of young tortoises are soft, hardening only after five to ten years. While the shells are soft the young tortoises are at the mercy of most predators they encounter. |