Photo: Lauren Kurkimilis/Marine Corps via AP

Near Twentynine Plams Marine Corps Base, 35 Desert Tortoises were recently released in an effort to repopulate the Mojave Desert at a ceremony with Marine Corps officials, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and researchers from the University of California Los Angeles.

Biologists have been raising tortoises over the past nine years at a six-acre facility to help boost the population that was nearly decimated by a respiratory virus in the late 1980s.

Read more at Marine Corps Times.