Gophers and Aldabras

[lazybfarm]

I am moving to Tarpon Springs, Florida, with my 2 Aldabras Jackson and General { 5 years old 115 & 105 lbs ]. On the back side of my property there I have 3 Gopher tortoise boroughs and Ive seen at least 1 of the tortoises on several occasions. My question is, What are the reprocutions from the Aldabras possibly confronting the gopher tortoises. The Aldabras enclosure will not be where the Gopher tortoise dens are.

 

[lazybfarm]

Here is one of them in my back yard

 

[wellington]

If the Aldabras enclosure is not going to include the gophers den area, can you use fence/cinder blocks/wood, so the gophers can't get into the Aldabras area, easily anyway?
Then if you see a gopher in the Aldabras area, you can put it over the fence near the dens.

 

[lazybfarm]

I will seal the fence so the gopher torts cant get in , but I guess they can always Dig In !
Anyway , its pretty cool to have the wild torts here on my property. The 3 dens are about 20' apart, I wonder if they connect underground, or are they 3 different burroughs?

 

[lazybfarm]

On a related note, I was returning home last week and as I was turning on to my street off of the main road, I saw a large Gopher tortoise crossing the highway, several cars were stopping, 1 car went over the top of him stradling the tortoise. I did not hesitae, I slammed the car in park, ran out into the street waiving my arms wildly to stop the traffic, which thankfully stopped, picked up the big guy and moved him off of the road. I know there are laws about even touching them, But, there is no way I was going to come back by there and see him dead in the road, I had rather pay the fine.

 

[wellington]

Yay, good for you. Stupid law anyway to not be able to touch them, specially for a reason like that.
I would risk the fine too

Yeah, I would think as long as they already have a den, the gopher, they likely wouldn't dig more, just guessing here.
I doubt they connect if there are 3 different tortoises. That could be quite a battle down under lol. It's real cool that you have them on your property.

 

[dd33]

We asked this same question about our Aldabras when we moved to our new property back in 2018. We had two Gopher tortoises that would graze on our property but had burrows in an adjacent property that had been abandoned for 30 years.
Two years later the adjacent property was cleaned up and the abandoned house was removed and mysteriously the gopher tortoises never came back to our property to graze again. The people definitely killed them.
Interesting side story. In 2019 or so we were having a horrific year for mosquitos. We decided to go in and explore around in the abandoned 10 acre property to see if we could find anything that was holding water. We found one of the gopher tortoises face down in a flower pot. It had walked off the raised porch of the abandoned house and fell face first into a large heavy pot. It had definitely been stuck this way for months based on the wear of the animal and the pot. Lucky for him we randomly found him that day but it appears his luck eventually ran out.

While it is extremely unfortunate and sad that the gopher tortoises are gone now it has made our lives a little bit "easier". Florida gopher tortoises are riddled with diseases, they are definitely, 100% a threat to your animals. And your Aldabras are also a threat to them from a disease perspective. The biggest concern is going to be Mycoplasma coming from the Gophers. That is not highly transmissible though, it typically requires direct nose/nose contact. There are other diseases that are suspected of being spread between tortoises by insects and there isn't much you can do to control that down here.

Keep the gopher tortoises fenced out with a buffer zone of fencing. Don't allow any contact through a fence. Pick up and dispose of any poops from your Aldabras at least once a day. If you need to handle the Gophers for any reason wear gloves.

edit: https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/moving-with-young-aldabras.171099/ link to our original threat about this.