MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Endangered species can be bad for business. If you have a protected animal on your land, you are probably in for some red tape. To avoid that situation, a growing number of businesses are pitching in to help save animals. Molly Samuel of WABE looks at one of the largest such efforts in Georgia.
MOLLY SAMUEL, BYLINE: Gopher tortoises are big, dry, wrinkly reptiles. They live in the southern part of Georgia and near the coast, including at two nuclear power plants owned by the biggest electric company in the state, Georgia Power.
JIM OZIER: Gopher tours do very well right next door, and we - we're glad to have them.
SAMUEL: Wildlife biologist Jim Ozier works for Georgia Power. We're walking at nuclear plant Hatch looking for gopher tortoise burrows among spiky palmetto plants and little wildflowers.
OZIER: You know, they spend a lot of their time out foraging, but typically, they do spend the night in the burrow.
SAMUEL: So maybe he's not awake yet.
OZIER: (Laughter) We might wake him up.
SAMUEL: Ozier is out here counting gopher tortoises because Georgia Power wants to save them. It's helping to restore their habitat. He's working with Savannah McGuire with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. She is crouching next to a gopher tortoise hole.
SAVANNAH MCGUIRE: And so here's a big, adult, active burrow.
SAMUEL: She says the burrows can be as deep as 40 feet. McGuire snakes a camera down into the hole.
MCGUIRE: Pretty much a camera on a cord, so we're going to stick it down the burrow and see if he's home.
SAMUEL: Gopher tortoises may be in trouble. One issue has been habitat loss. They also have a legacy problem. During the Great Depression, people ate them. They were nicknamed Hoover's chickens, and because the tortoises breed so slowly, they still haven't bounced back. McGuire keeps pushing the camera down the burrow and eventually...
MCGUIRE: There he is. So we have a tortoise.
SAMUEL: We can see the tortoise's patterned shell on an LCD screen.
MCGUIRE: That's an adult gopher tortoise.
SAMUEL: How old would you say?
OZIER: I'd say easily 40 years old.
SAMUEL: Oh, wow.
MCGUIRE: Yeah.
SAMUEL: Gopher tortoises are protected by Georgia environmental law, but the federal Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing them under the Endangered Species Act, which is stronger than the state law. Ozier says Georgia Power and other businesses don't want that to happen.
OZIER: Everybody wants to see the economy of Georgia thriving, and if there's too many environmental regulations, there's a concern that economic growth will dwindle off.
SAMUEL: Don Imm of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says private foundations and even the Department of Defense are all working together to try and save the gopher tortoise.
DON IMM: I think if you can do something to avoid the conflict, or even the need to list, that is a much better result.
SAMUEL: Better for the people doing business here and better for the tortoises. For NPR News, I'm Molly Samuel in Baxley, Ga.