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BERKSHIRE EAGLE (Massachusetts) 30 March 06 They went tat-a-way! Playing tag with turtles (Christopher Marcisz)

Williamstown: The group of students found their target — a seven-inch wood turtle named "Frida" — still deeply burrowed in the muck under a riverbank, evidently still enjoying her long winter's hibernation. She didn't seem to care about the 60-degree weather outside that suggested spring may have finally arrived.
Frida, along with a male nicknamed "Lefty," is part of a pilot study to learn more about the turtles that began when they were found and tagged last spring. This species is labeled as one of "special concern" in Massachusetts.
The effort is being led by Drew Jones, manager of the Hopkins Memorial Forest, which is run by the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies. Yesterday, he led a group of students from Elena Traister's environmental studies class at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to track the creatures.
Before setting off along the Hoosic River, Jones explained that the effort was intended to help understand life along the river.
"We're interested in conserving the watershed, and one component of that is knowing about the biodiversity there," he said.
The group set off to find the transmitting turtles, armed with nets and plastic buckets with clear plastic bottoms to look into the river, and wearing thigh-high waders.
Jones held a radio receiver that looked like an old television antenna that was attached to a receiver. Through the static he could hear the beeps, coming at regular two-second intervals.
The wood turtle, known formally as Clemmys insculpta, is listed as being of "special concern" by the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. While not as severe as an "endangered" or "threatened" listing, it means the species has "suffered a decline that could threaten the species if allowed to continue unchecked" or occurs "in such small numbers or with such restricted distributions or specialized habitat requirements that they could easily become threatened within Massachusetts."
Jones described how the turtles' habitats are fragmented, and how they are "dependent on a specific habitat type" that is "sensitive to disturbance." He said there are not many wood turtles in the area, and that in the course of the study he has only seen four so far.
Jones said he catches up with the turtles about three times a week during their active season, recording where they travel, how long they stay there and what the air and water temperatures are like. They can travel between 100 and 200 yards a day.
For these reasons, Traister said it makes them "an interesting case study" for the class, which introduces students to environmental issues.
After a few stops to listen to the distant and faint beeps, they began to close in on the female. They narrowed it down to a bank, where the group gathered around and began searching the water and along the banks.
Jones finally pulled Frida — who was named after Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, because she was found and tagged on Cinco de Mayo last year — out of her burrow beneath the 44-degree water. The roughly 25-year-old turtle was a bit shy about sticking her head outside her shell, where the quarter-sized transmitter with a long black wire attached was glued.
Traister's class has other fieldwork planned for the rest of the semester. Along with students from Williams College and Berkshire Community College, they will be working to document the movement of salamanders in and out of vernal pools in Williamstown next month. They will also help the Hoosic River Watershed Association assess water quality in streams leading to the Hoosic.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/localnews/ci_3653765