A female Sonoran Desert tortoise strolls at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The museum says 30 desert tortoises are available for adoption, a greater number than at this time last year. Game and Fish wildlife biologist Randy Babb cautions that moving desert tortoises out of their home ranges can threaten their access to food and water.

A.E. Araiza / Arizona Daily Star

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The sick economy has trickled down to the gentle desert tortoise.

Several recent cases of captive- tortoise dumping in Phoenix and Maricopa County parks are attributed to people who have lost their homes to foreclosure, Arizona Game and Fish officials say.

They assume the same thing is going on in Tucson and Southern Arizona.

A local Game and Fish wildlife specialist said eight desert tortoises were turned in to the agency's Tucson office in just the last two weeks. One was turned in by a woman who lost her job and had to give up her house.

The origins of most of the others are unclear, said Diane Tilton, an urban-wildlife specialist at the state agency's Tucson regional office. But she said the beginning of the monsoon season — which marks breeding season — also has male desert tortoises wanting to roam — and to use their prodigious digging skills to escape from backyards.

And the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which has run a desert-tortoise-adoption program since 1981, has 30 tortoises awaiting adoption, said herpetologist Craig Ivanyi, the museum's associate executive director. He said little is known about the tortoises' pasts, but the count is up from last year.

Both Desert Museum and Game and Fish experts say "helping" desert tortoises usually is a bad deal for the tortoises — even in fatter times.

Releasing formerly captive desert tortoises into the desert may spread diseases they picked up while hanging out in backyards to wild tortoises.

"One of the things that we're most worried about is upper respiratory tract syndrome," said Randy Babb, a Game and Fish wildlife biologist in the agency's Mesa regional office.

The disease has killed thousands of desert tortoises in California's Mojave Desert, putting that population on the threatened list.

The Sonoran Desert populations seems to be fairly stable, Babb said. "Somehow, they have managed to dodge this upper respiratory tract disease; we've had some individuals with it, but to date it has not caused the problems here that it has in California."

The disease and many others may be carried by backyard desert tortoises that lived with imported "pet trade" tortoise and turtle species from around the world.

Even healthy domesticated tortoises seldom survive the challenges of finding water and food in the wild, Babb added.

Running wild isn't something that just comes naturally. The newly free-range desert tortoises may not know where to find water or what to eat in the wild.

Picking up desert tortoises in the wild usually is a bad idea, for a couple of reasons.

It's best not to even touch one, unless it is in imminent danger — say, about to cross a road and become even shorter and slower than it already is. In that case, the experts advise, pick the tortoise up by the edge of its shell, keep it parallel to the ground and pointed in the same direction it was heading, and put it down as soon as it is in a safe place.

It's particularly important not to tip a tortoise from its horizontal alignment with the ground.

"When they are tilted, they often void water" — (urinate) — "that they have in their bladder, and that's like their canteen," Babb said.

He said tortoises may get only a few gulps of water a year, so they store their urine and recycle it. When they lose that stored liquid, they're running on empty and may not find more water in time.

Even delicately moving a desert tortoise too far can be life-threatening because they have a relatively small home range and may not be able to find new water and food sources when removed from their old stomping grounds.

"Relocating an animal is like me breaking into your bedroom at 3 a.m. and dropping you off in a village in New Guinea and saying you'll be OK because this is where people live," Babb said.

As for picking one up in the wild to take home, that's illegal. State law prohibits taking desert tortoises from the wild.

Instead Tilton, Ivanyi and Babb encourage you to adopt. It's not that hard, they say, as long as you have a suitable backyard and meet a few other requirements, including no pool and no dogs.

You can adopt, but you should remember that you may have to put Fluffy the tortoise in your will — a desert tortoise may live from 50 to more than 100 years.

If you want to adopt, contact the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum or the Phoenix Herpetological Society.