Photos: Best of the West

Wendy Cassidy, desert tortoise program director for the Phoenix Herpetological Society, gets up close to a 30-year-old male Sonoran desert tortoise in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Tuesday, July 31, 2012. Many people get the tortoises when they are young and then abandon them when they grow larger. There are more than 80 at the society. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Tom Tingle)