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The Mojave desert tortoise was listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of local population declines and an array of threats. Challenges to the recovery of this species include an incomplete understanding of the threats most responsible for its decline, insufficient information on the effectiveness of management actions, and the intractability of threats across a large geographical range and multiple jurisdictions. Recognition that these challenges require long-term conservation efforts to ensure the species’ persistence with or without the protections of the ESA-necessitates a more structured approach to recovery, including broad stakeholder participation. A conservation-reliant perspective will probably be increasingly relevant for additional species and for adapting land management in the face of climate change by improving regional coordination of management activities, broadening spatial and temporal points of view in management and increasing the emphasis on addressing multiple threats simultaneously.