Category Archives: turtles

Irene Round-up

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Hurricanes are a natural phenomenon, so nature pretty much takes care of itself during and after one. It’s the human factor that turns the collision of hurricane and wildlife into news. Here’s a look at how humans and wildlife are interacting after Irene:

-The US Fish and Wildlife Service has posted a list of damaged or closed facilities. It’s perhaps no surprise, considering how hard hit Vermont was, that its White River Fish Hatchery, in Vermont, is under water. Find the rest of the list, here.

-A whimbrel, a shorebird, that was tagged by a radio transmitter was tracked flying through the hurricane. It survived. Read the story in USA Today, although it appeared in many other news outlets.

-I am learning that after each natural disaster a story about how wildlife rehabilitators are assisting displaced wildlife is part of the boilerplate coverage. This time it’s wildlife rehabilitators assisting baby squirrels. I wish I were kidding.

-The storm was bad news for baby sea turtles and eggs still incubating on East Coast beaches. The Florida newspapers seem most interested in the story. Here’s one on the hundreds of baby sea turtles that turned up dead from Florida Today. And here’s one on the threat to nests from the Fort Pierce Tribune. 

-Finally, flooding washed sewage, pesticides and other contaminants into waterways along the East Coast. The New York Times has the story.

Photo: Hurricane Irene on Aug. 22, 2001. by NASA, via US Fish and Wildlife Service

Why Did the Turtle Cross the Road?

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bog turtle

Actually, “Where are the turtles crossing the road and getting hit by cars?” is the focus of a Massaschusetts citizen science research project, and it is one of several turtle research projects going on in this year of the turtle. For more info, read this article on the Massachusetts turtle road-crossing project in the Springfield Republican.

Here are seven other sources of information on turtles and turtle research:

Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas (MARA), a five year project that began in 2010 and will end in December 2014.

The USA Turtle Mapping Project is being run by the US Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station. It is focusing on seven species of freshwater turtles and tortoises to find out their current ranges.

Not surprisingly, PARC, the creator of Year of the Turtle has a list on its Web site of turtle citizen science projects. It’s a PDF. Here are some of the US-based land- or freshwater turtle projects on the list that aren’t already mentioned:
Blanding’s Turtle Research – Great Meadows, Massachusetts
Gopher Tortoise Tracker – Volusia County, Florida
Lake George Turtle Monitoring Program – Lake George, New York
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Neighborhood Box Turtle Watch
Western Pond Turtle Presence, Absence Monitoring Project -Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, California
Texas Turtle Watch 

Another resource on the PARC Year of the Turtle site is an Excel spreadsheet of 87 relocation, reintroduction, translocation, and headstarting projects. Turtles make up more than half of these projects, the rest are for other reptiles and amphibians. The idea, the site says, is to allow scientists running similar projects to get inside information on what worked and what didn’t so future projects can build on the past.

When it comes to turtles, the news is pretty bad, but it’s not all bad news. In June so many diamondback terrapins headed upland from Jamaica Bay in New York City that a runway at Kennedy Airport was closed. Here’s a news story, and background information from the journal Science.

We don’t normally cover research outside the US, but since we gave wildfires in the West so much coverage earlier this year, and because it is the year of the turtle here’s an exception. A paper in the journal Biological Conservation says that a species of tortoise in Spain can withstand wildfires every 30 years or so and still maintain its population levels. Read an article about the study in Science Daily, or the whole paper in Biological Conservation (or rather, read a free abstract and pay for the whole paper).

Finally, don’t forget our mini round-up of box turtle data earlier this year. You can find that post here.

Photo: Box turtle Credit: Laura Perlick, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife

The State of the Turtle

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At the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, outreach coordinator Marion Larson was tipped off to Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation’s (PARC) Year of the Turtle by state turtle biologist Lori Erb, who is an active PARC member.

Larson thought the timing was excellent for a Year of the Turtle. The previous year, the state had teamed with the University of Massachusetts in a program to identify and monitor highway crossing sites that were difficult for turtles. The biologists wanted to provide more training, and to round up more volunteers.
In fact, says Larson, the state turtle biologists had plenty of fantastic information on the state’s turtles, and lots of already-scheduled events featuring turtles. The Year of the Turtle was a vehicle, Larson says, “for taking all the disparate pieces and putting them together into something bigger and more over-arching.”
In Connecticut, the Year of the Turtle also provided inspiration and a deadline for outreach biologist Kathy Herz. “I think it has been a really great effort for us. It’s nice to focus on a small animal that is often overlooked in favor of bigger animals like turkey and deer,” Herz says.
In Connecticut, the Year of the Turtle has meant a monthly press release on a different aspect of turtle conservation, a Year of the Turtle Web site, fact sheets on 12 Connecticut turtle species (including sea turtles), an children’s art contest, and an events calendar.
Both Herz and Larson say that the Year of the Turtle has been a success, with plenty of media interest, and other benefits as well. In Massachusetts, for example, 100 additional volunteers signed up for the turtle road-crossing monitoring project.
Herz is sold on the idea of turning the spotlight on an under-appreciated species or group of species. It focuses the public’s and the media’s attention on overlooked conservation issues, and inspires her to check projects off her to-do list that might otherwise be overwhelmed by more urgent issues or more popular creatures. She says, “I’m hoping we will do another species next year.”
Visit the Massachusetts Year of the Turtle Web site, here.
Visit the Connecticut Year of the Turtle Web site, here.
Arizona was one of the first states to support the Year of the Turtle program. Find its turtle page here.
Finally, back at the mothership, PARC featured state efforts in its August newsletter. Find that article in a PDF here.
Tomorrow, in honor of the year of the turtle, we’ll take a look at several turtle research projects.
Photo: Red-bellied cooter and painted turtle. The red-bellied cooter (the larger turtle in the picture) is the focus of an annual event in Massachusetts that was included in the state’s Year of the Turtle festivities. Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service.

2011: Year of the Turtle

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You may think that 2011 is the year of the rabbit. And in the Chinese zodiac, it is. But 2011 is also the year of the turtle, as designated by Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (PARC). The goal is to spread the word about the worldwide risk to turtle species. According to PARC information, 40 percent of turtle species worldwide are threatened with extinction.

The Year of the Turtle program provides participants with a cool logo; a monthly newsletter with education materials, a calendar, photos, and interviews with turtle experts; a national site for turtle-related events; links to a wealth of information; and, most recently, a t-shirt available for purchase.
Fifty partners have joined with PARC to support the Year of the Turtle. Many of these partner organizations are reptile societies and conservation organizations of various stripes, but four states have also joined in: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Georgia, and Arizona.
Tomorrow we’ll take a look at how two of those states, Connecticut and Massachusetts, have woven the Year of the Turtle into their education and citizen science programs.

Illustration: PARC’s Year of the Turtle logo

Box turtle data bonanza

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Courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife

The current issue of American Midland Naturalist has three papers on turtles, and two on eastern box turtles. The first box turtle (Terrapene carolina) paper examined the clutch size and clutch frequency of box turtles at the Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge on eastern Long Island, NY. The researchers X-rayed the turtles they hand-captured. About 40 percent of the females captured were found to have eggs.

The big surprise for the researchers was that the average clutch size was 4.1 eggs. A previous study conducted in Connecticut (just across Long Island Sound from the research site) was 6.7 eggs/clutch. Yet another study in Maryland reported an average clutch size of 4.6. The Long Island study also found that clutch size did not appear to be related to body size in any statistically significant way. The authors suggest that clutch size may have more to do with specific local conditions than general geographic location.

Another surprise was that 95 percent of the turtle eggs survived at nests protected against predators, suggesting that egg predators play a big role in the population dynamics of eastern box turtles. You can find the paper here.

In the second paper, Indiana researchers radio-tagged box turtles and followed them for two years. They found that 96.2 percent of the turtles they tracked survived annually. Winter survival was lower than survival through the months of the year when the turtles were active (95.6 versus 96.7). Get more information from the paper, here.