Desert tortoises thrive after relocation to Nevada solar farm, surprising conservationists

Picture a flat, sun blasted basin in the California desert, the kind of place most people would call empty.

For thousands of years it belonged to a creature that moves at its own unhurried pace and asks for almost nothing in return.

What happened next, out among the rows, is not the story anyone wrote in advance.

An animal built for a place that punishes everything else

Then researchers looked closely at the desert tortoise living in and around a working solar farm in Nevada, and the picture flipped.