Sonoran Desert Tortoises are out across the Tucson basin this monsoon

September 14, 2026Arizona Upland/Eastern Sonoran Basins

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(Gopherus morafkai) have been out on the ground across the Tucson basin from mid-August into the second week of September, most of them in the Avra Valley west of the city and a smaller set on the rocky slopes below the Catalinas.¹ This is the one stretch of the year when the odds of meeting one on a trail are good. The animal spends most of its life underground or under rock, and it comes out mainly in daylight during the monsoon, when the rain has greened up the forage and filled the shallow pools it drinks from.

It is a domed, high-backed tortoise the color of the caliche it digs into, with a shell somewhat narrower and more pear-shaped than the Mojave desert tortoise's. The two species are split by the Colorado River and do not overlap here, so any wild tortoise on this side of the river is the Sonoran one. It favors steep, rocky ground and the bajadas below it, not open valley floor, and it shelters in burrows it digs itself, in caliche caves, and in rock crevices.

The tortoise drinks from puddles a finger deep by putting its nostrils to the surface and pulsing its throat to pull the water in. It also scrapes basins in the soil to catch rain and remembers where they are, walking directly to them when a storm passes. What it takes in goes into a bladder that can hold water for extended periods and release it back into the bloodstream as the body needs it. When a rain finally comes after a long dry spell, a tortoise drinks heavily, voids the concentrated urine it has been carrying, and stores fresh water in its place. In a hard drought an adult can go a long time without drinking.

It eats plants only, leaning on annual wildflowers first and then grasses and cactus, with prickly pear fruit taken whenever it is ripe. September is also hatching season. Eggs laid in early summer, buried in the floor of burrows, hatch in September and October, though some clutches hold over and hatch in spring. A hatchling is about the size of a silver dollar and soft-shelled for years. Only a small fraction reach adulthood. Those that do mature between 13 and 20 years old and can live 50 to 80 years, which means a tortoise crossing a trail this week may have been crossing the same slope since before the surrounding subdivisions were built. Breeding peaks in August and September as well, so two adults seen together right now are likely a courting pair.

iNaturalist flags the species as threatened, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reviewed it and found in 2022 that federal listing was not warranted, and it does not appear on the current federal list for this area.² The pressures on it are the same either way. , an introduced African grass now widespread around Tucson, burns hot enough to kill saguaros and palo verdes on slopes that never evolved with fire.¹ The tortoise needs an unburned desertscrub slope with rock to hide in and annuals to eat after rain.

Anyone who finds one should leave it where it is. A tortoise picked up or frightened may void its bladder, and in a dry year that is the water it was counting on to get through to the next storm.

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