The gopher tortoise, our ancient friend

The tortoise is a land-dwelling turtle. It is a very ancient creature with a proven anatomical system for survival. The way these animals operate in the world has been incredibly successful for over 200 million years. Just like sharks and alligators, turtles evolved a workable design and stuck with it.

Turtles and tortoises are descendants of the archosaurs along with birds, alligators and crocodiles. These animals are much older than dinosaurs and survived Earth’s last three mass extinctions. When approximately 75% of all life on Earth went extinct, these animals remained relatively abundant. About 60 million years ago, modern land tortoises walked in North America, and the modern gopher tortoise appeared about 2 million years ago.

There is some debate about whether turtle-like organisms evolved their shells to live on land or in the water. The shell has two parts: the plastron and the carapace, which is partly made from the tortoise’s ribs. The ribs are incorporated into the shell. It is believed that the development of a rigid skeleton is good for both digging and swimming (like sea turtles) so both are plausible.

The southeastern United States is home to gopher tortoises, one of five species that live in North America and the only one east of the Mississippi River. Once very abundant, they are now pushed to the edge of extinction for the second time in the last 100 years. The most current threat to the gopher tortoise is habitat loss, causing the recent decline in their numbers.

In the 1930s, humans ate gopher tortoises in unsustainable numbers during the Great Depression. The gopher tortoise was an important food staple for poor rural Southerners, who referred to the animal as a “Hoover chicken” after President Herbert Hoover. Families were going hungry all across the Southern states at that time, and the tortoise was slow, easy prey.

At the same time, tortoises also became a source of free entertainment, as communities held gopher tortoise races.

Evidence shows Indigenous people consuming tortoises as food for more than 12,000 years. Florida’s ancient southern longleaf pine forests and the miles of sand ridges are the tortoises’ favorite habitats. The gopher tortoise must have been in heaven with so much land to roam for millions of years. It is hard to imagine how much time this peaceful, contributing species had to enjoy Florida and provide for other living creatures. That is until most of the forests were cut down and the land was covered over with concrete.

On Amelia Island, locals will tell you gopher tortoises love the ocean. The animals frequently cruise out of the dunes and head for the Atlantic Ocean. As they enter the surf, the waves often roll them around. They land back onshore and then head for the ocean again, doing this for a few minutes or for an hour. Experts presume that the tortoises are either removing parasites, cooling off, or even relocating downshore. While humans should not intervene if a tortoise enters the water on its own, people should never place a tortoise in the water, as land tortoises cannot swim.

Gopher tortoises are a keystone species and environmental engineers. In the next article, we will learn how important gopher tortoises are to their greater ecological community. Tortoise burrows provide habitat for over 360 species of Florida natives.

On July 10, 2026, the International Union for Conservation of Nature revised the gopher tortoise's status from “vulnerable” to “critically endangered.” The organization noted that “the tortoise’s critically endangered status indicates it is facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild, given current knowledge about its population trends, and recent, current, or future threats.”

We share our habitat with the gopher tortoise. We need increased public awareness of how to protect the tortoises and coexist with them.