Reid is perfectly happy to take both their money. Their aims are not in conflict. Solar companies don’t give a rat’s patootie about the cows or the tortoises, and the Enviros are perfectly happy to trade some desert over in that spot for total control and absence of man in this spot.
Earth worshiping death cult types don’t approve of cows, independent living or meat eating in general. Anytime they can screw that up, they will. What do you want to bet that the executives of these “non-governmental agencies” moonlight as conservation and mitigation consultants and soak up some of the mitigation money.
And there is a a solar company involved, just not a Chinese one. Although, if they revive that deal, they’ll designate the exact same land as off site mitigation and collect the fees for it, no problem.
They hate the idea of people other than themselves making a buck. For example, they hate logging, even if it helps the forest by thinning, because somebody's making money on it. It has nothing to do with eating meat. The environuts are wrong about the tortoises vs cattle, too, and playing on the ignorance of most people. They can and do coexist quite nicely. The tortoises love the partially digested food the cattle leave or them...
If the enviros cared about the Desert Tortoise, they would have thrown more of a fit when the government decided to kill them off by the hundreds (thousands?) when they shut down a preserve. They chose to kill them all rather than release the healthy ones. (Or did I screw this one up, too?)