Scientists built an artificial nesting mound for wood turtles in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey when development and invasive plants made the original site less viable. A paper in the journal Northeastern Naturalist describes the successful transfer of nesting turtles from one site to the other. The mound has produced 142 nestling wood turtles in four years.

But more important than describing the success, the paper gives an idea what was required to produce it. The artificial mound was just 100 meters from the old mound. Nest-bound females were fetched from the old site and hand-carried to the new site. While one turtle returned to the artificial mound for the next three years, several others were brought back from the old site in another year.

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Photo: cliff1066(TM) via Flickr