Print pagina - Glyptemys insculpta (Woodturtle)

*******************GLYPTEMYS INSCULPTA (WOODTURTLE)****************************

De foto's hieronder zijn van Mike Jones een bioloog uit Amerika.
Mike heeft gedurende een meerjarig onderzoek naar verschillende populatie's Glyptemys insculpta vele foto's gemaakt en op die manier een prachtig beeld gegeven van de Glyptemys insculpta in de natuur van Amerika.
Op 22 plekken in 5 waterrijke gebieden zijn erin het totaal 140 Glyptemys insculpta gevolgd door Mike met zendapperatuur.
Voor een periode van op zijn minst 1 jaar tot meerdere jaren, hierbij is meer ontdekt over de leefwijze, voedsel, habitat, habitat gebruik, paring, populatie struktuur en andere dingen met als doel zoveel mogelijk te weten te komen om advies te kunnen geven over beschermings plannen wat betreft de Glyptemys insculpta en zijn habitat.
Een tegenslag die grote impact had op de populatie's en het onderzoek is de storm van 2005 in Massachusetts geweest, toch heeft ook dit natuurgeweld Mike verschillende dingen over de Glyptemys insculpta geleerd en meer inzichten gegeven.
Wij willen Mike hartelijk bedanken voor de vele foto's die hij beschikbaar heeft gesteld en van commentaar heeft voorzien, ook al onze vragen die wij gesteld hebben over Glyptemys insculpta heeft hij beantwoord.
En de tijd die hij daaraan heeft besteed.

Bedankt Mike en succes met de verdere studie naar deze prachtige schildpad de Glyptemys insculpta.

Schildpaddennet team

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Oude manlijke Glyptemys insculpta die gevolgd is met een radio-zender sinds 2004 in Franklin County, Massachusetts.

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Parende Glyptemys insculpta in de Lower Connecticut River, Massachusetts manlijk dier nummer 16 uit het onderzoek.

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Prachtige gekleurde Glyptemys insculpta man aan het zonnen op een oeverkant aan de rand van een klein stroompje in Massachusetts.

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Glyptemys insculpta man nummer 380 in het Westen van Massachusetts.

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Glyptemys insculpta man 317 net op de oeverkant geklommen om te zonnen in het Westen van Massachusetts.

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Een half volgroeid jong van Glyptemys insculpta.

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Volgroeide Glyptemys insculpta man nummer 37, zeer fors van lichaamsbouw.

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Habitat foto van Glyptemys insculpta waterstroompjes en kleine riviertjes, dit is in New Hampshire, Massachusetts.

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Man 106 Glyptemys insculpta lopend langs de modderige oeverrand op zoek naar voedsel van een riviertje in het Westen van Massachusetts.

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Parende Glyptemys insculpta in September, Franklin County Massachusetts.

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Volgroeide Glyptemys insculpta man hij mist een voorpoot maar redt zich goed.
Mike heeft dit dier herhaaldelijk gezien voor een periode van 3 jaar, Steeds op verschillende plekken maar binnen een straal van 500 meter.

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Deze vrouwlijke Glyptemys insculpta is oud maar wordt door mike omschreven als een fel dier, voor een periode van 3 jaar heeft Mike haar gevolgt met behulp van een radiozender.

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Ook deze man Glyptemys insculpta is door Mike bestudeerd, het dier leeft in een klein en smal waterstrookpje, wat een aftakking is van een veel grotere rivier.
Heel soms is het dier te vinden bij de grote rivier meestal zonnend op de oeverkant.

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Deze man Glyptemys insculpta droeg een radiozender in April 2005, dit leverde interesante gegevens op voor Mike, toen door uitzonderlijke weersomstandighedn het riviertje waarin hij leefde plotseling steeg en overstroomde, het water ging sneller stromen en door de sterke stroming werdt dit mannetje en andere Glyptemys insculpta dieren meegesleurd, later is dit dier terug gevonden, enkele mijlen stroomafwaarts ver van zijn oorspronkelijke leefgebied.

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Parende Glyptemys insculpta het vrouwtje is nauwlijks te zien onder het grote mannetje, hier zitten ze in een stroompje wat van een berg afkomt in Hampshire County Massasuchsetts.

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Vrouwlijke Glyptemys insculpta.

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Parende Glyptemys insculpta in November.

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Parende Glyptemys insculpta in November.

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Glyptemys insculpta man 106 Franklin County Massachusetts, prachtig donker van kleur met een fijne tekening.

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Halfwas Glyptemys insculpta op de oeverkant opzoek naar voedsel, hier heeft het diertje net een slak gevonden en je ziet daarvan nog een stukje in zijn bek.

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Plastron van 4 Glyptemys insculpta dieren uit het onderzoek in Hampshire County, Massachusetts.
Mike heeft hier net de radio zenders verwijderd.

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Close-up van de kop van een man Glyptemys insculpta, Hampten County, Massachusetts.

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Mike vondt dit vrouwljke Glyptemys insculpta dier wat hij onderzocht/volgde sinds 2004 dood, oorzaak hiervan tijdens het maaien door de overheid is zo'n machine over haar heengereden.

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Vrouw Glyptemys insculpta uitgerust met een radiozender, zij wordt gevolgd sinds 2004.

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Nadat Mike deze Glyptemys insculpta vrouw 59 en man 27 onderzocht had en habitat informatie genoteerd, ruikt het mannetje geintereseerd aan het vrouwtje.
leefgebied een smalstroompje, langs de kanten dicht begroeid in Franklin County, Massasuchetts.

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Vrouwlijke Glyptemys inculpta, Mike vondt haar 4 dagen na de meest verwoestende en heftigste storm, die alle records brak in Massasuchetts, begraven onder slik en afval, amper nog in leven.

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Vrouw 66 Glyptemys insculpta had minder geluk en overleefde de storm en overstroming niet.

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Parende Glyptemys insculpta, man is nummer 8 uit het onderzoek, de vrouw wordt niet onderzocht.

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Deze foto heeft Mike gemaakt om het geslachtsverschil duidelijk te laten zien, links de man recht de vrouw.
Man heeft en veel dikkere/langere staart en een gleuf in het midden van zijn plastron, bij de vrouw is het staartje veel dunner en korter zij heeft geen gleuf in haar plastron.

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Halfwas Glyptemys insculpta ziitend in een waterstroompje.

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Glyptemys insculpta habitat in Centraal Massachusetts een prachtige plek volgens Mike.

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Een moment om te herinneren verteld Mike over deze foto, zelden vindt hij 3 vrouwlijke Glyptemys insculpta, op de oeverrand, samen aan het zonnen.
Ze zitten hiertussen Japanse knotweed wat tot de water kant groeid.

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Man Glyptemys insculpta aan het zonnen op een boomstam die boven het waterstroompje ligt waar hij in leeft.

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Vrouwlijke Glyptemys insculpta bezig met het "' proeven"' van de grondvoorafgaand aan het vinden van een geschikte nestplaats.

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Bij dit mannetje ontbreken beide voorpoten (Mike heeft sporen van de roofdieren bekeken en gevolgt twee roofdieren vallen Glyptemys insculpta regelmatig aan, de otter en de minx , deze zijn
verantwoordelijk voor het regelmatig tegenkomen in de Glyptemys insculpta populatie's van dieren met het ontbreken van 1 of meerdere poten).
De wond bij dit mannetje is goed genezen en uit het onderzoek blijkt hij zich prima te redden.

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Dit is een van de eerste foto's die Mike gemaakt heeft van de Glyptemys insculpta, hier zwemmend in een waterstroom.

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Vrouwlijke Glyptemys insculpta bezig met het graven van een nestplaats.

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Vrouwlijke Glyptemys insculpta bezig met het graven van een nestplaats.

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Close-up Glyptemys insculpta vrouw

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Close-up Glyptemys insculpta man

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Glyptemys insculpta vrouw 14 werdt hier door Mike verstoord terwijl zij bezig was haar eigen eieren op te eten, oorzaak/reden hier voor is onbekend.

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Ook Glyptemys insculpta man 13 werdt door Mike gevonden met als doodsoorzaak overreden door een maai machine.

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Hier is de penis van de man Glyptemys insculpta gedeeltelijk te zien.

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Op de foto is goed zichtbaar hoe het mannetje zich vast klemt tijdens de paring aan haar schild.

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Vooral in de herfst zitten de Glyptemys insculpta onder de bloedzuigers.

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Proefgaten gegraven door een vrouwlijke Glyptemys insculpta, voordat ze het eigenlijke nest graaft en haar eieren legt.

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Glyptemys insculpta eet hier bramen.

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Glyptemys insculpta vrouw tijdens het eten van een slak.

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Dood Glyptemys insculpta hatchling nog half in zijn ei gevonden in een nest.

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Glyptemys insculpta vrouw verstopt tussen de bladeren.

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Glyptemys insculpta man met oogletsel.

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Habitat Glyptemys insculpta Franklin County Massachusetts.

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Glyptemys insculpta 17 met oud genezen stuk uit zijn schild.

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Ook Glyptemys insculpta 107 weet goed te overleven met het ontbreken van 1 van zijn voorpoten.

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Parende Glyptemys insculpta.

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Glypteys insculpta tijdens de winterslaap in het water.

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Juvenile Glyptemys insculpta.

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Juvenile Glyptemys insculpta.

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Glyptemys insculpta gedood door een otter.

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Habitat foto Glyptemys insculpta Wisconsin

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Habitat foto Glyptemys insculpta New-England

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Habitat foto Glyptemys insculpta New-Hampshire

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Schild van Glyptemys insculpta voor en na de overstroming/storm,
De schade is veroorzaakt door het botsen tegen stenen terwijl het dier door het water meegesleurd werd.
Vier dieren van de onderzoeksgroep vonden hierbij de dood, de impact was groot doordat vele dieren kilometers meegesleurd werden.
Twee dieren wisten op eigen kracht naar hun oorspronkelijke leefplek terug te keren, dieren die op ongeschikte plekken terecht waren gekomen zijn door Mike gezocht en teruggeplaatst waar ze leefden.

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Man Glyptemys insculpta etend van een paddestoel.

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Close-up van het Carapax van Glyptemys insculpta.

******************* White Mountain Wood Turtle Project******************************

Het White Mountain Wood Turtle project is gebaseerd op het unieke plastron wat elke Glyptemys insculpta heeft.

Geen plastron is het zelfde, je kan dit vergelijken met een vingerafdruk.
Verschillende onderzoekers/biologen waaronder Mike hebben afgesproken dat ze elke Glyptemys insculpta die ze tegen komen in een afgesproken gebied , een plastron foto maken en deze met een aantal gegevens in een archief stoppen.
Dit project loopt al enkele jaren en op deze manier ontstaat een indruk van de populatie daar en gegevens hierover, die voor de verschillende onderzoekers/biologen op een mooie manier verkregen zijn door samen te werken.
Hieronder een aantal foto's uit dat archief die Mike gemaakt heeft.

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WATERLOO CEDAR FALLS COURIER (Iowa) 01 June 08 Turtle power (Jon Ericson)
Cedar Falls: For an endangered species, wood turtles sure are tough little devils.
"They have a remarkable ability to survive. I see some on the road having been hit by a car or in a field that looks like they've been hit by a disc," said University of Northern Iowa biology professor Jeff Tamplin. "They routinely survive having limbs chewed off."
Yet the wood turtle is rare in Iowa. Tamplin spent 1 1/2 years looking for them before finding his first one. Others had told him they no longer exist in the state.
Tamplin is among about 20 researchers across the country studying wood turtles. He is the only Iowan studying them, and one of just a few in the Midwest. As an endangered species, the wood turtle is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant part of its range within the state.
Last week Tamplin finished a short summer class with 13 UNI students tracking the turtles at a location in Butler County and in West Virginia.
Tamplin has found 60 of the turtles in Iowa since he started researching them in 2003.
He's made a number of discoveries through his research and published several papers. One such discovery was that they eat prairie ragwort, a plant poisonous to most other animals.
Most suspected the turtle population in Butler County was a ghost population, separate from other wood turtles and comprised entirely of adults. That made it more exciting when Tamplin found a juvenile turtle earlier this year.
Another discovery happened during the class session as students found turtles in West Virginia. One student picked up a turtle only to have it defecate on his hand. The unfortunate instance turned to gold, when the fecal material contained a partially digested snake skin, the first proof that wood turtles eat snakes in addition to vegetation, slugs and nightcrawlers.
The wood turtles spend much of their time migrating to fields and woodlands and back to their winter hibernation spots in muddy river banks. They share one of their more endearing traits they share only with humans --- the skill of creating ground vibrations to trick earthworms to the surface, thinking it's raining.
"They raise up like doing pushups then drop to the ground," Tamplin said. "It's about as exciting as wood turtles get."
For the students, mostly biology majors of one form or another, the chance to spend three weeks tromping through the woods proved irresistible.
Junior Sam Berg, the champion turtle-finder for the session, said he has always been one to track down little creatures.
"I've grown up around animals. I grew up around horses, and I kept snakes and frogs. My parents didn't like it much," Berg said.
One day last week another student, Devin Weoman, lugged around one turtle that had been caught earlier, then brought back to UNI for evaluation and marking. He noted this one was especially healthy, having all its limbs and tail. Wood turtles frequently lose limbs and tails early in life, as those appendages don't entirely recede into the shell and can be easy targets for raccoons or fox. Tamplin said even with a limb missing, the turtles can survive for their typical life span of 60 or 70 years.
Tamplin suspects populations or the rare turtle remain along the Shell Rock, Cedar, West Fork of the Cedar rivers, and possibly along the Winnebago River.
http://www.wcfcourier.com/articles/2008/06/01/news/metro/10371093.txt

TORONTO STAR (Ontario) 24 May 08 Putting the brakes on wildlife deaths; Driving indigenous species off-road may be key to saving them from extinction (Tess Kalinowski)
Catching frogs and turtles on the banks of the Rouge River or Etobicoke Creek used to be a rite of childhood in the Toronto area.
Now it's rare.
In the Toronto region, where development is pushing out animal habitat, there's one more factor that's proving catastrophic to certain species: road kill.
In some cases, it's pushing them to the brink of extinction.
Led by the Toronto Zoo and the 15-member Ontario Road Ecology Group, scientists and conservationists are now trying to stem the damage and engender the kind of protections the British famously lavish on hedgehogs.
The relatively new science of road ecology, which has taken hold in Europe and western Canada, is gaining ground here.
Ontario is stepping up animal protections along highways with more road signs, deer reflectors and extra-high fencing - measures aimed as much at protecting people as wildlife, according to the experts.
The Ministry of Transportation also says it will build at least one wildlife overpass for mammals across the Highway 69 expansion between Sudbury and Parry Sound. It will be similar to 10 such structures that have been built over the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park.
In Richmond Hill, environmentalists claimed a victory about five years ago by having small culverts built under the Bayview Ave. extension through the Oak Ridges Moraine to protect Jefferson salamanders.
But the zoo's curator of conservation programs, Dave Ireland, says he can count on his fingers the number of animal passages under and over Ontario roads.
"British Columbia has policy that demands planners and designers take into account wildlife. We have no policy specifically for wildlife mitigation in and around roads," he says.
While planners and developers are beginning to talk to conservation officials about road expansions, such as the planned Highway 407 route to Clarington through the moraine and Greenbelt areas, ecologists would like those discussions to take place before roads are mapped in such a way that they separate animals from the wetlands they need to breed and feed.
Frog populations, still healthy elsewhere in the province, have almost disappeared here. Six of eight native turtle species are endangered, five of them victims of traffic.
"The wood turtle has all but been extirpated from the Toronto area, where it was thriving 50 years ago," laments Ireland. "You're 10 times more likely to see the American badger dead than you are alive. It's endangered. An almost explicit cause of its status is roads and vehicular traffic."
Road ecologists say data tracking the impact of vehicles is crucial to persuade planners and policy-makers to account for wildlife in road design.
Turtles, for example, are extremely long-lived, and their offspring have a low survival rate. So, relatively few casualties can have a serious impact on a local population.
"The death of turtles is different from the road deaths of mammals like rabbits, skunks and raccoons," says avid conservationist and Brampton teacher Don Scallen. "The survival strategy of these mammals is to breed at an early age and to offer some measure of parental care to their offspring. They don't wait long to become parents, and then the young they produce have a better chance of survival than young turtles."
Scallen was heading to Long Point on April 17 when he came upon a turtle carcass on Highway 24 near Brantford.
Scallen got out of the car for a closer look. By its yellow throat and high- domed shell, he recognized it as a Blanding's turtle, a protected species that's in serious decline. A search revealed six more casualties.
"It was the first warm day after a cool period," Scallen says. "The suspicion is they were hibernating on one side of the road and they wanted to get to the other side, where they would spend the spring and summer, and then return to the east side in the fall."
Fortunately, he found three living turtles and ferried them across.
"Research has found that more than 93 per cent of adult Blanding's turtles need to survive each year to maintain a stable population. In areas like the turtle crossing on Highway 24, the survival rate is likely much lower," says Scallen. "If they're dying at that rate, that population will plummet very fast. "
Scallen's report to the zoo's Turtle Tally, part of its Adopt-a-Pond program, is the kind of public input ecologists are encouraging.
Last month, the zoo hosted a road ecology conference of about 120 transportation planners, conservationists and scientists - people who seldom end up in the same room. The largest contingent of delegates was from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. It's a hopeful sign, says Ireland.
But some believe the window for gathering data is closing as development and roads gallop ahead to keep pace with the region's growth.
Animals have to be studied before a road separates them from their native wetlands. Then the species needs tracking after a road is built, and wildlife passages need careful study to ensure animals are using them to advantage.
Another window is closing, too, suggests Scallen: "You don't miss what you don't know. It's important to bring knowledge of these creatures to kids as much as possible and inculcate the appreciation of them."
But how do you do that if children can't see the animals?
http://www.thestar.com/article/429514

THE GUARDIAN (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island) 29 March 08 Finding Norbert - Since he was found in Summerside four years ago, Norbert the abandoned wood turtle has enjoyed his free daytime reign and range in one department of the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown (Mary MacKay)
Ah, the life of Norbert.
After all, not every wood turtle has free reign and range of an entire department at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) in Charlottetown, dines royally on finely diced foods and celebrates celebrity status among students, staff and visitors alike.
“He’s quite a star around here,” AVC animal resources technician Angie Harnish says of Norbert, who is of the Clemmys insculpta of semi-aquatic wood turtle kind.
“I’ll be sitting at my desk at the end of the day and the students will walk by (his cage) and say, ‘Hi, Norbert!’ People will stop and talk to him. And I’m not talking just students either, it’s professors and researchers. Everybody stops by and knows him by name and says hello.”
Norbert is by no means an introverted turtle with his head and legs withdrawn from the world. Instead he’s always on the ready to run in his ungainly turtle-style gait. In fact, if he’s held too long, his legs kick into motion, signaling that it’s time to get down and go.
“These turtles would normally walk several kilometres a day so we let him get his exercise to stimulate his appetite and good health,” says his guardian, Wayne Petley, manager of the Animal Resources Department at the AVC.
Although P.E.I.’s wilds are wood turtle-less, these shelled reptiles do call New Brunswick and Nova Scotia home, where they are a protected species.
Despite Norbert’s ability to move pretty darned quick when he wants to, it isn’t likely that he crossed on his own four feet to P.E.I. via the great Confederation Bridge divide.
Instead Fisheries and Oceans personnel retrieved him from a front lawn of a Summerside home about four years ago. Petley suspects he was taken from the wild and subsequently let go here.
Because Norbert’s history was unknown — how long ago that he was captured or how reliant upon humans he was — he was taken into the AVC’s orphaned turtles fold instead of being reintroduced to the wild.
Norbert is a typical 12-year-old. He has plenty of energy to burn and is bursting with boundless curiosity.
“This sort of species is known to be the smartest of the turtles,” Petley says.
“So this turtle can compete with a lab rat in terms of intelligence.”
The proof is in the path that Norbert plots each day. Instead of wandering aimlessly down the corridor, he usually bypasses a myriad of doors in a beeline for the lab that houses an electron microscope, his utmost favourite dark, warm hidey-hole.
“He has about 10 of his favourite hiding spots that we all spend 10 minutes on our hands and knees looking for him in around 4:15 (p.m.) every day,” says Lee Dawson, a technologist with AVC’s Animal Resources Department.
“Anywhere dark and hidden away – the darkest, farthest part of this place is where you’ll find Norbert.”
When one AVC staffer was gone for a month, the lab door was shut, causing Norbert some serious consternation.
“We’d let him go down the hall and he’d sit outside the door with his head looking up at the window. And he’d sit like that for hour, looking like ‘OK, come on. Open the door. I’m going to sit here till you open the door,’ “ Harnish says, laughing.
“He was beside himself because he couldn’t get in.”
Despite constantly being underfoot, Norbert hasn’t been stepped on or caught in a closing door. Just to give passers-through a heads up about the wee creature underfoot, there are signs advising people to “Please keep doors closed. Wood turtle exercising in this corridor.”
“Every so often someone will say, ‘Do you know there’s a turtle on the loose out here?’ ” Dawson adds with a smile.
Norbert is footloose and fancy free all day, but it’s turtle roundup time every day at work’s end. More often than not it’s just a matter of checking Norbert’s favourite spots but sometimes he’s MIA.
“He’s gone astray sometimes. We’ve had incidents where we’ve had to have UPEI security help us because if somebody leaves a door open, he’ll wander down the halls,” Petley says.
“Some of us were a bit stressed to make sure that he was back in his home for the night with his food . . . . We’ve had some late nights until we found him.”
Norbert eats meat, but his main diet consists of fruits and vegetables.
“They’re called opportunistic omnivores, so they’ll eat just about anything that comes along,” Petley says.
“So in the wild he would probably eat insects, small frogs maybe, whatever he can catch, some vegetation, some berries.”
Feeding time for Norbert at the AVC is like the Turtle Hotel Ritz. He is served the best cat food available for his protein requirements, and the rest of his diet is comprised of whatever berries are in season, especially strawberries, as well as melons, lettuce, tomatoes and more.
“We’ve got him a bit spoiled really,” Harnish says. “In the wild, he’d have to eat a strawberry whole, but we cut it up. I’m bad. I cut it up in teeny little pieces and I’ll shred the lettuce into little bits . . . .
“If I feed him, the next morning most of his food will be gone, but if (someone else) is in a rush and it’s not ripped up good enough, he won’t eat it . . . . In that way, he does have a personality.”
There’s only one thing lacking in this turtle utopia.
“That’s right, there is no Mrs. (Norbert),” Petley says.
There is, however, a small population of other orphaned turtles being housed at the AVC, but their species is almost completely aquatic so they spend all their time in an aquarium.
It might seem that Norbert is living the free life, but he does provide a service for his keep.
“Not only is he a great teaching model for AVC students, he is also a major mascot, especially during open house day and summer vet camps for children.
“In an institute like this where (the students are) learning about all kinds of animals, to have these are really, really valuable because a lot of people have never even come close,” Petley says.
“The children, when they come here for the open house, are just floored. They’ve never seen anything like it.”
In terms of longevity, Norbert could outlast most of the AVC staff’s career span but there’s no fear of him not faring well with the next generation.
“He is as affectionate as a turtle goes but not a cuddly pet,” Petley says.
“They have personalities, especially this species . . . . They all have a little bit of a personality.”
Think carefully before bringing home a turtle
Choosing a turtle as a pet is a decision people should weigh heavily before taking the plunge.
Like other exotic animals, turtles require specialized dietary, housing and medical needs.
“I think the biggest issue with the turtle trade, people don’t realize how long they live,” says Wayne Petley, manager of the aquatic facility at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) in Charlottetown.
For example, Norbert, a rescued wood turtle who now lives at the AVC, could live up to 50 years in the wild and even longer in captivity.
“If you have a pet that lives over 30 to 50 years, kids grow up, they move away and parents usually end up with the turtle.
“And that’s usually the case of orphans being dropped off,” Petley.
“So it’s a long-lived animal and they grow. They don’t stay little.”
However, in the case of Norbert, who is a semi-aquatic wood turtle native to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, he and the rest of his species should be left to roam in their home habitat.
“This is a protected species,” Petley says.
“So that’s why I have a bit of an issue of taking these animals from the wild because they are protected. This one is not really endangered right now but they are at risk, and one of the main reasons they are at risk is because they are so easy to catch.
“And they’re quite friendly tame turtles so people tend to pick them up and then they take them . . . .
“They should be left where they are.”
http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=121407&sc=100

STAR-LEDGER (Newark, New Jersey) 23 March 08 Slow critters block expansion (Leslie Kwoh and Robert E. Williams III)
Two wood turtles that look like this one could interfere with expansion plans for Morris Township's recreational fields. On summer nights, thousands of soccer players, Little Leaguers and Pee-Wee football players flock to recreation fields in Morris and Harding townships. But there isn't always enough space. The need for new fields is such that many players are forced to travel to surrounding towns to play sports.
So last year, Morris Township began eyeing a 16-acre site bordering Route 287 in Harding Township to build additional recreational fields. Morris officials began drawing up plans to build two multipurpose artificial turf playing fields, a concession stand and restroom facilities there.
Now, those plans could be at risk -- because of two turtles.
Two local scientists have found that the area near the proposed fields are already being used by wood turtles, a threatened species state officials say were once found in large groups and now are found only in small numbers because their habitat is disappearing.
The sightings could alter Morris Township's plans to build the Mount Kemble Recreation Complex. According to planning maps presented by township officials, the two proposed fields are tightly sandwiched between two wetlands areas protected by the state.
If the turtle sightings are confirmed by the state Department of Environmental Protection, the existing 50-foot buffer zones could be increased to 150 feet, DEP officials said. Maps show the increased buffers would overlap with the area set aside for the fields.
Morris Township officials say they are determined to see the project through.
"We have to wait and see," Morris Township Mayor Robert Nace said of the impact the turtle sightings may have on the proposal to build the complex. "We will do whatever legal efforts we will have to do to be OK."
According to the sighting report, filed with the DEP last month, a male turtle was spotted resting under a plant in 2001, and a female turtle was seen sunbathing on the banks of a stream. The sightings were within 600 feet of the proposed development site, across Route 287 on a 50-acre conservation area owned by the Great Swamp Watershed Association.
The turtles were near Silver Brook, a small stream that runs from a tributary located at the development site, said biologist and wildlife photographer Blaine Rothauser, who filed the rare wildlife sighting report for Great Swamp association.
The water in Silver Brook flows from one side of Route 287 to the other through a 4-foot-wide storm pipe -- a path Rothauser says the turtles might also follow.
"It's like their Holland Tunnel," he said.
"They have to get to our property from somewhere," added Sally Rubin, executive director of the Great Swamp Watershed Association. "They don't just drop down from parachutes."
Rothauser suspects the turtles are still there, as they are known to live up to 60 years. He also believes the area is home to more than just two turtles.
"You got a male, you got a female. You figure the site will hold more turtles," he said, but added: "If you clear that amount of land, you're going to impact the water quality there. It could affect the species' ability to perpetuate into the future."
The next step is for the DEP to verify that the turtles live at the site, said spokesman Lawrence Hajna. The process should take "several weeks," and could require sending a state biologist to the area. In some cases, if the person filing the application has "expertise in the field," the sightings can be verified without a site visit, he said.
"Credibility is a big factor," Hajna said. "It's done on a case-by-case basis."
The DEP does not know how many turtles live in the Great Swamp area, though a verified sighting in 1999 suggests the species does inhabit the general area, he said.
The wood turtle has been listed as threatened species in New Jersey since the 1970s, and is among 80 threatened or endangered species in the state, according to the DEP. They are found mainly in the northern part of the state, and depend on wetlands and streams for breeding and burrowing.
This is not the first time wood turtles have threatened development plans. Chatham officials had planned to build two ballfields, a 9/11 memorial and a parking facility at Woodland Park, a 6.6-acre site the borough purchased in 2002. Those plans have been put on hold indefinitely after wood turtle sightings in 2005 were verified by the DEP.
The Mount Kemble Recreation complex was proposed last year as a way to relieve a shortage of playing space. The project will cost an estimated $3.8 million and construction is slated to begin later this year if Morris Township gets approval from Harding.
Morris United Soccer coach John Gilfillan, whose organization has more than 1,000 children playing in its soccer programs, said turtles or no turtles, he's confident Morris Township officials will do whatever is necessary to meet all DEP requirements. And he hopes that work leads to new fields.
"If it turns out to negatively impact the project, that would mean a tremendous setback for the children of the greater Morris Township area," Gilfillan said.
http://www.nj.com/morristown/index.ssf/2008/03/slow_critters_block_rec_fields.html

BAY WEEKLY (Annapolis, Maryland) 28 February 08 Reptile Rules - New state regulations protect creatures that hop, crawl and slither (Carrie Madren)
Host a copperhead snake as a pet in Maryland, and you’ll soon be an outlaw.
That’s because new rules will govern the capture and possession of reptiles and amphibians after March.
Nearly a dozen changed regulations will affect Maryland turtle keeping or frog leg eating. Most new rules will simply get our Maryland Register code up to date with new laws. Other changes will protect diminishing species losing their homes.
The poisonous copperhead and Eastern mud salamander will join the list of protected species — a handful of sea turtles, rare salamanders, snakes and frogs — that cannot be captured, bred or sold in the state.
Copperhead snakes get banned from our living spaces not to protect the snakes but to bring Department of Natural Resources regulations up to speed on laws passed by the General Assembly. Last year, legislators changed the law on harboring dangerous animals to ban possession of poisonous snakes. That’s stricter than the current law, which only bans importing the venomous serpents.
The Eastern mud salamander, a rare native species, gets protection for its own sake.
“These salamanders are likely declining in range,” says Glenn Therres, of the department’s Wildlife and Heritage Service. “It’s not a popular species as a pet, so there will probably be no ramifications.”
French chefs and 10-year-old boys will mourn one cutback: New regulations allow you no more than 10 wild American bullfrogs for food or pets. Bullfrogs weren’t previously on the list of regulated species.
“Bullfrogs are native, but they have flourished by human releases,” says Therres. “There’s a food market for bullfrogs. We’re trying to regulate all species, so we added bullfrogs and made provisions for food. We’re not trying to regulate the food industry but to curtail exploiting the native population.”
So you can’t set up shop as a frog-leg distributor. The legs you might find at markets may hail from Louisiana, which raises bullfrogs for food.
New to the state conservation list are six aquatic turtles: the eastern painted turtle, the midland painted turtle, the eastern mud turtle, the northern red-bellied cooter, the stinkpot and the diamondback terrapin. Turtle enthusiasts can have up to one adult turtle without a $25 permit and more with the permit.
If you’re already keeping more than one native turtle, you must apply for a grandfathering permit with DNR by March 31.
If you want your turtles to propagate, you’ll also need a breeding permit.
“A few years ago the General Assembly was petitioned by herpetology folks to allow for breeding of turtles,” Therres says. The Health Department had previously limited breeding for fear of spreading salmonella, he explained, until lawmakers passed a law allowing turtle breeding with a permit.
“DNR was always in support of captive breeding, which provides turtles for hobbyists and pets,” says Therres. If you don’t breed the turtles yourself — with a permit — you must buy them from out of state. Currently, any turtle that you sell must have a carapace length of at least four inches.
That law got a Towson couple in trouble on Jan. 31. Maryland Natural Resources Police busted them for selling undersized juvenile red-eared slider turtles through an Internet advertisement. The couple had originally purchased 300 turtles and had sold all but 27 of them from their apartment. For their reptilian folly, the sellers were each issued a citation; if found guilty, they’ll face a maximum penalty of $500 and/or one-year imprisonment.
New changes in the law include allowing us to buy and sell baby turtles — less than four inches produced in captivity, with a permit — outside of Maryland.
“We don’t have a problem with turtles in the pet trade, but we’re encouraging that they come from captivity, so there’s less pressure on wild populations and they can be sustained,” he says.
Terrapin champion Marguerite Whilden insists it’s a bad idea to allow people to breed and keep terrapins as pets.
“Now we’re going to give to someone else the chance to commercialize these turtles,” says Whilden, terrapin teacher and advocate. “Do we still need to be exploiting wildlife?”
The new herp laws will be a good, albeit miniscule, step for our state reptile.
When new regulations pass, Marylanders — even with a permit — can’t take wood turtles, spotted turtles or diamondback terrapins, our state reptile, from the wild.
“You can still legally acquire them from captive breeding programs,” Therres says, with a permit. After the legislators passed the ban on commercial terrapin harvesting, DNR banned all catching in the wild. The department also shifted terrapin regulations from its fisheries office to Wildlife and Heritage.
Even so, the there’s by-catch — or accidental trapping — of terrapins in crabpots that remains a problem, according to Whilden, who says her next focus is getting more habitat back for the state turtle. That’s a concern at DNR, too.
“The problem with all turtles is that population decreases primarily with reduction of adults in population,” Therres says. Add a shrinking adult population to disappearing sandy shorelines and turtle habitat, and we have a recipe for species trouble.
The state of our terrapins remains an educated guess at best. Terrapins are still so understudied that scientists don’t know how many thrive in the Chesapeake.
Laws will officially change when published in March in the Maryland Register.
See the complete list of changes to reptile and amphibian laws at www.dnr.state.md.us/wildlife/proposedcaptive.asp.
http://www.bayweekly.com/year08/issuexvi9/leadxvi9_2.html

Mich. lawmaker: Let turtles be roadkill
He opposes $318,000 fence aimed at protecting species, avoiding crashes

Associated Press

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - A congressman disputes the state's contention that it's worth $318,000 in federal money to keep turtles from becoming roadkill.

Installation is expected to begin this week on a 2-mile-long fence along both sides of U.S. 31 in Muskegon, in west-central Michigan. It is intended to prevent hundreds of turtles, some of them protected species, from being killed as they migrate to nesting sites along the Muskegon River, which the highway crosses.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., questions why the Michigan Department of Transportation did not consider using the money on other projects "more related to the movement of people and products."

"Serious times require a serious approach to the very real problems Michigan faces," Hoekstra said in a news release.

The 4-foot-high chain-link fence has been planned for two years. State officials consider it a relatively inexpensive solution to a problem that affects traffic safety and the environment of rare turtle species.

The fence will cover a stretch of road that is Michigan's deadliest for turtles and one of the nation's worst for the reptiles, Tim Judge, manager of a Transportation Department service center in Muskegon, said Thursday.

Two state-protected species — the wood turtle and Blanding's turtle — are common traffic victims, as are snapper, painted, box and map turtles.

Department spokeswoman Dawn Garner didn't know whether any drivers swerving to avoid turtles have gotten into crashes, but said: "There is definitely the potential for improving the safety of motorists."

The barrier is being financed through the federal government's transportation-enhancement program. Money from the program must be used to improve the public's traveling experience but cannot be spent on building or repairing roads.

Hoekstra, who has questioned the fence project since it was proposed, said the state should have petitioned federal officials to use the money for road construction.

"The state has not requested greater flexibility in how to spend federal highway dollars, and Lansing bureaucrats need to begin to think more creatively in how they address our state's problems," he said.

Article Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21377685/from/ET/

CHRONICLE HERALD (Halifax, Nova Scotia) 05 October 07 Patched, hatched and dispatched - Rescued wonder turtle’s baby released into St. Marys River (Kelly Shiers)
This toonie-size turtle has quite a tale: Call it the sequel to the summer’s survival story.
In Chapter 1, a wood turtle run over by a passing vehicle was found by a sharp-eyed motorcycle cop on a busy Halifax street, rushed to surgery, nursed to health and finally recognized and returned to her bucolic river home hundreds of kilometres away.
But Dunlop, named for the tire that split her shell, was pregnant when she arrived at Oaklawn Farm Zoo in Aylesford, where she was taken in July to recuperate from the trauma of her near-fatal ordeal.
And that’s where Chapter 2 begins.
"Every night before I left work and every morning when I got here, I went down to the pond and checked for eggs," said Mike Brobbel, the zoo’s reptile curator, who cared for the injured critter.
His was a task all the more critical because the number of wood turtles has dropped so much that it is considered one of the province’s vulnerable species.
The worry, Mr. Brobbel said, was that the stressed-out Dunlop was already weeks late laying those eggs and if she didn’t release them soon, she would be in danger again.
"Over three or four days, she was just dropping them here and there," he said. "I found six eggs. One was collapsed and two were torn up, so there were only possibly three that could actually be incubated."
The precious mini-eggs went into the zoo’s incubator July 21, three weeks before Dunlop was deemed well enough to go home — not to the streets of Halifax but across the province to a spot along St. Marys River in Pictou County.
Mark Pulsifer, a biologist with the province’s Natural Resources Department in Antigonish, was one of the scientists who organized the mother’s release.
He had a special interest in making sure she got home because he had recognized Dunlop from a picture in The Chronicle Herald that appeared when she was first found. The triangular markings visible on her shell were artificial and proved that Dunlop was Turtle No. 1536, notched as a research subject in one of his own studies.
At the time, he said he could only surmise that someone had picked her up in Pictou County, even perhaps thinking she might make a good pet, and then let her loose.
But Mr. Pulsifer wasn’t only determined to bring her back to familiar waters. He wasn’t about to let any of her little ones go astray, either.
"Right from the very start, when Mike (Brobbel) first told me he had eggs, I told him, ‘Please make sure I get any hatchlings so I can return them to the population where they belong,’ " he said.
"There was never any doubt whether it was one or 10 that they were all coming home. They were all coming back to this area."
So a story that might have ended with the mother’s release back to the wild on a rainy summer day instead continued.
On Sept. 6, one hatchling (too young for anyone to tell its sex) broke out of its egg, weighing only 6.39 grams. The news was bittersweet. More would have been better but one was still a success.
For a week, Mr. Brobbel waited and watched. And when it seemed to be eating fine on its own, he contacted Mr. Pulsifer.
Last week, Mr. Pulsifer went to the zoo to pick up the baby.
The next morning, he placed it in the river, about a kilometre from the spot where its mother had been released, to an area where he hopes the turtle might be able to survive its first winter.
"I didn’t want to handle the turtle any more than I had to or stress it any more than I had to," he said, explaining why he didn’t notch this one in the same way its mother was marked by students in 2005.
As a result, there’s really no way to track whether this little one survives.
The odds, he said, are stacked against it. But then the odds are against these kinds of turtles, anyway. As many as 95 per cent of eggs never develop, are eaten or somehow destroyed before they hatch. Even if they do hatch, the chances of these bite-sized babies surviving to adulthood are minimal at best.
Certainly the odds have been against these turtles at every turn.
But human nature has trumped Mother Nature, at least for now.
Significantly, Dunlop’s baby may be one of a very few hatchlings along that stretch of the St. Marys River to have survived through the summer and into the fall. A flood had submerged 22 nests that were under the close watch of Mr. Pulsifer’s student researchers, and none of those turtles seem to have lived.
"One turtle counts," Mr. Pulsifer said.
"Maybe that one turtle we save will be that one that does live to be 15 or 16 and then goes on to live 30 years after that and successfully reproduces. Maybe that one turtle turns out to be a female, and she in turn will lay eight to 10 eggs every year for her adult life — for 30 or 40 years — and that will make a difference."
So all this effort for a vulnerable population is well worth even an uncertain outcome, he said, chalking up the human intervention to two things.
"One, because we can," he said. "And two, because we care."
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Front/936948.html

CHRONICLE-HERALD (Halifax, Nova Scotia) 11 August 07 T L C; Dunlop, the little wood turtle that was run over on a busy road this summer, isn't just any turtle. She's Turtle No. 1536. (Kelly Shiers)
This is a turtle tale with a twist: a saga that starts off sorely with a wounded, pregnant wood turtle on a busy Halifax street and ends, in true storybook form, at a picturesque Pictou County stream hundreds of kilometres away.
Her fabled cousin learned that slow and steady wins the race. But perhaps the lesson this time is that a little help from strangers can make finishing even the most difficult trek a lot more possible. "This is where she belongs. This is home," Mark Pulsifer said as he led a group of scientists and onlookers to a spot along East River St. Marys on Thursday.
In his hands he held the squirming wood turtle, her legs thrashing flashes of bright orange in the pouring rain, her head straining out of a shell scarred by the ordeal of being struck by a vehicle early last month.
"She's picked up the scent of the river. . . . She knows she's home," added John Gilhen, a wood turtle expert and former curator of the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History.
"I think this is a marvellous thing."
Marvellous. And unlikely.
Just last month, the chances that this turtle would survive, let alone ever swim again in familiar territory, were almost nil.
Mr. Gilhen remembers reading The Chronicle Herald story about a pregnant turtle that had been rescued by a sharp-eyed motorcycle cop after she was run over on the city's busy Purcells Cove Road. He looked at the picture of Dunlop (nicknamed for the tire that likely ran over her) taken at the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital, where her broken shell had been pieced together with fibreglass and resin.
What he saw were the small, telltale trian-gular markings filed onto her shell that showed Dunlop had once been documented by researchers.
"I recognized that turtle as one of ours as soon as I saw it," Mr. Gilhen said, adding he believed she had likely come from along the Musquodoboit River, the St. Marys River or perhaps even River Inhabitants in Cape Breton.
"I thought, 'This girl's going home. She's lucky.' "
That same day, Mr. Pulsifer, a regional biologist with the province's Natural Resources Department in Antigonish, was also reading the story. He also noticed the tiny triangular shapes notched into the turtle's shell. But as the man who heads up a wood turtle project on the St. Marys River, he was even more certain about those marks.
"When I saw the notching pattern, I said, 'It's one of ours.' "
Mr. Pulsifer wondered, and continues to wonder, how she got so far from home.
But he knew two things for sure.
"We wanted that turtle back here . . . and we also wanted the hatchlings."
After staff searched through their records, Dunlop was eventually identified as Turtle No. 1536, notched by students working on the St. Marys River in 2005. But the information also revealed that she hadn't actually been found by the students. In fact, that year they were even surveying for turtles along that particular stretch of waterway. Rather, she'd been brought to them by a passerby who found her, likely as she tried a perilous crawl across the road. The researchers notched her, made notes about where she was found and then returned her to the water in that area.
"That is how we know this is the exact location," Mr. Pulsifer said. "This is it."
By the time Mr. Pulsifer had gathered that information, the injured turtle was recuperating at Oaklawn Zoo in Aylesford under the watchful care of experienced reptile curator Mike Brobbel.
And that's where she stayed, foraging with 20 or so other turtles in a closed pond, until Wednesday, when Mr. Gilhen placed her in a dog carrier in the back of his car to begin the trek home (with just one overnight stop at Mr. Gilhen's Halifax home). She left behind three eggs that are now in a zoo incubator and Mr. Brobbel says if they hatch next month, they'll be "the icing on the cake."
But why all the fuss over a turtle?
"When you look at these big, black, weepy eyes, you fall in love with them," Mr. Gilhen enthused that day. And perhaps that's true.
But what's also true is that wood turtles, one of only four turtle species native to this province, is considered vulnerable - just a step below threatened.
Its situation is so serious that a management team, including Mr. Gilhen and Mr. Pulsifer, is working to try to ensure its population survives, through ongoing research and education and by working with landowners to protect their preferred habitat, the meandering rivers that wind through valleys and prime agricultural land.
"They're dwindling mainly because people take them home as pets," Mr. Gilhen said.
"Not only is it illegal to do that, but it's a darn shame. They take them home, show them to the kids, and then let them go," he said, guessing that could be what happened to this one. "There are probably hundreds of wood turtles just wandering around in the woods of Nova Scotia for the rest of their lives - and that could be 20, 30, 40, 50 years - completely useless to the breeding population."
The loss of even one adult female is a huge blow, Mr. Pulsifer said. "A female can probably reproduce for 20 to 30 years, so to lose a female like her means you're losing eight to 10 eggs every year. And even if only five per cent (of those eggs) - if that many - would survive, that, over time, is a significant loss."
Mr. Pulsifer said the research and conservation work underway now will make a long-term difference to the wood turtle population, but the effects might not be known for decades.
Still, this case shows the value of their work, he said.
"We know this project is doing good because we've got this turtle back here," he said.
The fact that so many people were interested in getting this turtle well and home again is very telling.
"It says something about us as a people if we have that understanding and we want to make sure our wildlife is secure," Mr. Gilhen said. "If people would just kill them or discard them, then that says something else about the people."
Of course, all of that was lost to the story's main character as she was carried down the slippery slope to the river's edge Thursday. With a splash, she was released from the hands of Kyle Biggar, one of the St. Francis Xavier University students working on the wood turtle project this year.
She floated momentarily on the surface before quickly moving out of sight of the rain-drenched scientists, students and interested onlookers who waited on the road above to see the latest chapter of her story unfold.
And when she was gone, with just a little prompting, they cheered.

http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Search/852578.html

CHRONICLE HERALD (Nova Scotia) 05 July 07 Underneath this Halifax cop’s shell is a soft spot for wildlife - Officer rushes injured, expectant turtle to safety after it was run over by a car (Josh Visser)
A Halifax motorcycle cop was looking for speeders Tuesday afternoon on Purcells Cove Road when he noticed a car swerve, then another, then another.
"At first I thought someone was secretly trying on their seatbelt to avoid getting a ticket," said Sgt. Mike Spearns of Halifax Regional Police. But after seeing the second and third car swerve in the same area, the officer decided to investigate.
Little did he know that he would be the first responder in the dramatic rescue of a pregnant mother, a rescue that would extend over two days and involve three hospitals.
Arriving at the scene, Sgt. Spearns found an injured wood turtle, its shell cracked after having been struck by a vehicle.
Needing a car to take the animal to a veterinarian, Sgt. Spearns immediately called for backup and began performing first aid.
"I got a little water for it, as it appeared stunned, but it certainly was trying to move, so I kept it in place with my feet," he said.
Sgt. Spearns named the turtle Dunlop, figuring that was the brand of tire that hit the female turtle.
Const. Marcus Reeves arrived in a police cruiser and rushed Dunlop to the Spryfield Animal Hospital.
"He put (Dunlop) in a nice box in an air-conditioned car," Sgt. Spearns said of his colleague.
After a short stay in Spryfield, Dunlop was sent to the Metro Animal Emergency Clinic overnight Tuesday and was moved to the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital for surgery Wednesday.
An hour before the surgery Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Ian McKay at the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital said that Dunlop had fractures on the top and underside of her shell.
He described a complicated-sounding procedure in which the vet would apply fibreglass mesh and fibreglass epoxy and possibly some stainless steel wire to "pull the fracture line together."
Adding to the tension was the discovery that Dunlop is pregnant, so to speak, with 11 eggs to lay.
Wood turtles, which are a "vulnerable" species in Canada, normally lay their eggs in late June or early July.
After a nearly 90-minute surgery, Dr. McKay left the operating table, able to call the procedure a success.
"The surgery went beautifully," Aundrea Smith of the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital said on behalf of Dr. McKay early Wednesday evening.
The next step for Dunlop was to move in with Hope Swinimer, the director of Hope for Wildlife, a rehabilitation centre for wildlife in Seaforth.
Ms. Swinimer said Dunlop appeared in fine spirits and that the turtle would have a habitat built for her at the centre.
She added that Dr. McKay would be checking the turtle out today to see if antibiotics were needed to help Dunlop with her eggs, which she is expected to lay any time now.
It’s been quite the trip for the little turtle that tried to cross the road, but it wouldn’t have gotten far without the compassion of Sgt. Spearns.
The sergeant took a moment to think philosophically about what he accomplished Tuesday.
"Normally the police are out there after the hare, not the tortoise," he said. "I’m glad I was there because the poor thing would have been squished if we hadn’t been able to get it off the road."

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/845472.html

BOSTON GLOBE (Massachusetts) 16 October 06 For 'genius grant' naturalist, turtles are a lifetime passion - Turtles are the stuff of his dreams (Peter DeMarco)
Warner, N.H.: David Carroll walks slowly through waist-high underbrush, his eyes scanning for wood turtles hiding among the thorns and fallen leaves.
The seven- and eight-inch-long creatures blend in with the brown earth, but if he's lucky this day, he says, he might catch one basking in the autumnal sun.
Carroll, who says he needs to regularly indulge his ``swamp habit," has discovered some 200 wood turtles in this flood plain near his home. ``I've known some individual turtles out here for 18 years," he says.
``I come out here with . . . my calipers for measuring shell lengths," he said. ``Here I am, so 19th century."
Carroll is indeed 19th century -- like Henry David Thoreau himself. A naturalist, artist, and author, he has spent more than four decades studying freshwater turtles, capturing their slow-moving lives through thousands of detailed illustrations and books such as ``Swampwalker's Journal," ``Self-Portrait with Turtles," and ``The Year of the Turtle."
Last month, the MacArthur Foundation rewarded Carroll's devotion to turtles and to the preservation of local ecosystems with one of its prestigious ``genius" grants. The $500,000 award is a financial boon to any recipient, but perhaps none this year more so than Carroll, 64, whose finances are such that he hasn't been able to afford health insurance for 30 years.
``The only part is I've got to live the next five years to receive all the money, so I'm considering just sitting all day in the rocking chair with a bike helmet on," he said, his dry wit ever present. ``My friends have told me, `Don't shovel any snow.' "
That Carroll marches to his own beat there is no question. As an art teacher at Silver Lake Regional High School in Kingston , Mass., in the late 1960s he ``walked to school, bought his clothes at second-hand stores, and was rumored to have turtles living in his bathtub," recalls former student Wendy Wyman Campbell. At age 60, he took up German -- he already knew Italian and Spanish -- and became so proficient that he co-taught a high school German class two years ago.
Philosophically, he stands at the far end of the naturalist movement, lobbying not only for conservation lands to be set aside but for lands to be preserved as untouched habitats where not even bikers, hikers, or joggers are allowed.
His message isn't always popular, but audiences are drawn to him nonetheless, both as a charismatic speaker and a writer who crafts mundane field observations -- a love triangle between three spotted turtles, the drowning of a female ruby meadowfly -- into intensely personal stories.
``He just has a wonderful ability to convey not just the importance of protecting the natural world, but also for conveying the very interesting things that happen there," said Tom Irwin, a friend and staff attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation's New Hampshire office.
Carroll was 8 when he fell in love with turtles. His parents had just moved the family to Connecticut, where his father was in the Navy, and Carroll went wandering past his new backyard into some wetlands. Spotting a turtle in a clear patch of water, he jumped in, shoes and all, to grab it.
``I came home that evening with a turtle in my hands and my shoes were soaked and I was late for supper," he remembers. ``Well, I'll tell you, getting your shoes wet and being late for supper were pretty much capital offenses in my mother's house."
And that was before they noticed the turtle.
But there was no stifling Carroll's fascination. The following spring, when the turtles came out of hibernation, he trekked into the swamp to find, draw, and catalog them. And he has done so ever since, arranging his life so that he can spend some time almost every day from spring to fall among the turtles.
Trained as an artist -- Carroll and his wife, Laurette, met during their ``urban era" at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts -- his intricate drawings and careful observations of wood, spotted, and Blanding's turtles have become highly respected within the scientific community. He has lectured at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, helped dozens of biology graduate students with field research, and has been a steady contributor to scientific journals.
``The insight and the information provided in his books are incredible as a resource for somebody like me," says Jackie Litzgus, a professor of biology at Laurentian University in Canada who has spent 16 years researching spotted turtles. ``He's so in tune with the ecology and the behavior of these animals because his motivations are different [than scientists'.] He does it because he loves the animals."
On this day, out in the marsh, Carroll doesn't find any of his beloved creatures. Still their presence is felt. Dressed in a green camouflage shirt, his thick silvery hair held back by a black headband, the top of Carroll's head looks like a shell.
``Someone wrote that I see the world through the turtle's eyes," he says. ``I guess I just see something that is beyond any human imagination.
``It's incredible what our science has told us and what insight our imagination has given us. But there's a lot more there. And that's what I see."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2006/10/16/for_genius_grant_naturalist_turtles_are_a_lifetime_passion/?p1=MEWell_Pos3

STAR-LEDGER (Newark, New Jersey) 18 October 06 No shell game here: Turtle foils ballfields (Rohina Phadnis)
The wood turtle packs a lot of punch for its 5- to 9-inch size -- enough to halt Bedminster's plans to build athletic fields at River Road Park.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has rejected Bedminster's request for permis sion to build recreational fields near environmentally sensitive areas of the 177-acre park off Route 202/206, near the North Branch of the Raritan River, saying it would disturb the habitat of wood turtles, a reptile on the state list of threatened species.
The township acquired the land for River Road Park in 1989 with funding from the state Green Acres program. The site was subdivided in 1995 into two sections -- 28.5 acres for "active" recreation and the remaining portion -- named The Stahl Natural Area -- dedicated for "passive" use.
A spokesman from the DEP said Bedminster received a viola tion notice in 2003 for starting construction in the park and moving soil. In May 2005, the township submitted a waiver application to allow construction in the environmentally-sound area while protecting other portions of the site. The waiver was denied this month.
In its notification to Bedmin ster, the DEP said the proposed construction at River Road Park would "result in the disturbance of a transition area that is critical habitat for wood turtles, a state threatened species."
The wood turtle was listed as threatened in 1979 because of a decline in its numbers. The turtles are small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and can be sighted from early spring to mid-fall throughout most of New Jersey.
According to wildlife experts, most wood turtles -- identified by sculptured growth rings on their shells -- live 40 years or more in a home range of a few acres near streams, rivers and ponds. And destruction of their habitat is suffi cient to exterminate them.
The state is closing the case of the original notice of violation be cause restoring the soil would further disturb the turtle's habitat, a DEP spokesman said.
The DEP denial of the township's proposal to preserve parts of the park while developing others closer to environmentally sensitive areas means the project is now on hold.
Mayor Bob Holtaway said the township would review the DEP findings.
Phoebe Weseley -- a member of a group of residents who hired an environmental consultant to study the area -- said she was concerned about how little the township had studied the property before start ing construction.
"Why should we have to spend our own personal money to find if there's endangered species?" she asked.
"By not following the DEP rules here, in my view, they're setting a horrible precedent," said Bill Purcell about Bedminster's waiver ap plication to the DEP. He said he would like to see the Stahl Natural Area put into a conservation easement to legally reserve it.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/somerset/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1161150318158060.xml&coll=1

CHESTER OBSERVER TRIBUNE (New Jersey) 12 October 06 Wood turtles get special attention; Great Swamp refuge project hopes to protect species (Christina Mucciolo)
Harding Twp.: For 10 years, threatened wood turtles went unseen in the vicinity of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, until a graduate student came across one that had been run over by a car last summer.
That student, Susie Ponce, 27, of Texas, helped trigger a program designed to track and save the threatened wood turtles in the Great Swamp.
In the summer of 2005, Ponce helped Kurt Buhalmann, a professor at Towson (Md.) University to catch, tag with radio transmitters, and track bog turtles at the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, when they came across the dead wood turtle.
"We found a dead wood turtle on one of the main roads in the Great Swamp, and Kurt Buhalmann, who has been doing work at the refuge (Great Swamp) for many summers, recommended I do an artificial nesting habitat for the wood turtles, and I took the idea to the next level," Ponce said on Sunday.
Ponce was participating in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Student Experience Career Program at the Great Swamp, which allows graduate students to go to school and work, by getting field experience during the summers.
Ponce did her undergraduate study at Texas Agricultural and Mining University in College Station, Texas, and is in her last year at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., studying part-time for a master's degree in environmental science. She also is working at the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, Md.
With some help from her counterparts at the Great Swamp, including her supervisor, wildlife biologist Mike Horne, she spent last summer, constructing, testing, and monitoring artificial turtle nesting habitats in the swamp to find out more about a species that is endangered in New Jersey, the wood turtle.
"Wood turtles are not on the federally endangered list, but they are species of special concern in New Jersey, as they are on the state's threatened list," Ponce said, "They used to be very abundant, and now the numbers have declined."
Stream degradation is one reason for the declining numbers, as wood turtles require clear water, and Ponce said, with a lot of urbanization and impervious services, the storm water runoff gets into the streams and makes the water murky and unpleasant for the turtles.
Another concern in addition to de-forestation and the nesting habitats, is that some people like to collect wood turtles as pets.
"They are extremely intelligent turtles," Ponce said of the shelled sages who accrue their wisdom over an incredible life span of up to 60 years.
The Project
Ponce said there are several objectives to the project, the first being that there has not been a lot of research done on the nesting habitats of turtles, specifically wood turtles.
By designing and constructing a creative habitat for the biological and ecological needs of the turtles, Ponce said she is trying to find some way to reduce predation on the turtle nest, from fox, possums, and other creatures who eat the turtle eggs. In addition she said the boxes provide an arena to effectively evaluate what types of sub straits turtles like to nest in.
"Each turtle has its own natural substrate, or type of spoil, that they prefer, and we were trying to find what substrate they prefer in order to manage the species in decline," Ponce said.
The artificial nesting habitat is made of four boxes, framed of wood and covered with chicken wire, with about a four-inch hole wide enough for the turtles to enter. Ponce said each box contains a different type of sub strait.
"We chose two substrates that turtles nest in at the refuge, soil and sand, and then we had one box with stone dust and one with dirt and gravel aggregate because we saw turtles nesting on the trails and the roads," Ponce said.
"Initially, we started in one particular area where wood turtles historically nested in the habitat," Ponce said. "We saw a lot of snapping turtles and painted turtles nesting in the habitats."
Typically, Ponce said wood turtles mate twice a year, once in the fall when they go back to their hibernation spots near the streams, and once in the spring right before they begin nesting, laying anywhere from four to seven eggs from mid-May through July. Snapping turtles, on the other hand, can lay up to 20 eggs.
"The peak season for turtle nesting is June, so we do the project then, during the busiest nesting season," Ponce said. "Usually after two months, the eggs hatch in late August and September."
At the end of June, Ponce said they closed the ramp and entrance of the nesting boxes, and then during July they put in pitfalls to catch the hatchlings as they emerged, so they could determine which turtles were there by the number of hatchlings and the amount of scat.
Ponce said the wood turtles start walking towards their hibernation spot in late-October and November, where they stay until the weather starts to warm up in March or April. She said the turtles love to hibernate in the undercut areas along stream banks, amid the roots of large trees.
Although no wood turtles have been spotted in the nesting habitats, Ponce said they have spotted about eight wood turtles in the Great Swamp.
"We were just doing a survey of a stream and we happened to find one and we kept searching," she said. "We tagged four wood turtles with radio transmitters."
Then, one very hot day, Ponce said she found something very interesting while doing her daily check of the moisture and temperature of the substrates in the nesting habitats.
"The soil, which has a high clay content was hard, the stone and the dirt and gravel aggregate was hot, but the sand was dry and wasn't too hot, and a snapping turtle had nested in the sand," Ponce said. "In the beginning I wanted to see what the turtles like and by the end of the summer I realized that it has a lot to do with moisture and temperature."
Ponce said turtles like to nest in places that are open, and are not too wet and not too dry.
"I have another field season with the nesting project next summer, and there are going to be several modifications for next year," Ponce said. "The next thing to look for is to see where they go and the best places to put the structures."
Ponce said she plans on tracking the wood turtles with radio transmitters, collecting them next summer, and putting them in an enclosed nesting habitat structure, instead of a giving the turtles a choice of going in and out of the structures. In addition, she said there are many different decisions that can be made, such as mixing the different substrates for different nesting habitats.
Ponce and others at the Great Swamp plan to continue their project with new innovations next summer, but in the meantime they have broken a 10-year long absence of a species in the refuge.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17321418&BRD=1918&PAG=461&dept_id=506868&rfi=6

SALEM NEWS (Massachusetts) 18 September 06 Slow and steady:Scientists and locals work together to track, save turtles (Julie Kirkwood)
Dustin Koocher, 6, pressed his hand into the deep grass inside a wire cage at the edge of a busy athletic field in Georgetown. He touched the ground blindly in the center and then in each corner, hoping his fingers would fall upon a baby reptile.
"If you feel something like a rock, you pull it out and see if it's a turtle," he said.
Dustin's hand found no rocks or turtles here, so he and his brother Travis, 9, lugged their gear to the next wire-covered nest to have a look.
A woman noticed the boys and walked over to ask their mother, Diane Koocher of Newburyport, what they were looking for. Koocher explained that they were helping with turtle conservation by measuring, weighing and then releasing baby turtles.
"I'm here for the soccer game," the woman said, "but I think that's very admirable."
Unbeknownst to many people, many of the oldest and most comfortable residents of Georgetown and Groveland are these gentle, shelled creatures. The area, sometimes called Turtle Land, supports the second largest population of rare Blanding's turtles in Massachusetts, as well as many painted, snapping and spotted turtles.
Turtle biologists have known about this spot for years, but it is only recently that they've been sharing the secret with the public. Dozens of people came to a turtle picnic this summer at one of the prime turtle nesting grounds in Georgetown, many of whom were learning about the turtles for the first time.
"My children played soccer here and I still never heard anything about this," said Donna Spaulding of Georgetown. She brought her granddaughter, 4-year-old Juliana, to the picnic because the girl likes turtles.
"It tickles," Juliana said, holding a baby Blanding's turtle in her palm. "He has claws."
The risk of sharing this treasure with the public is that people will destroy the nests or try to catch the turtles for illegal trade, said turtle biologist Mark Grgurovic, who discovered this nesting site when he was working on a master's degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The potential benefit, though, is recruiting a citizen science team to make large-scale research and conservation possible, and also winning the support of the public for protecting turtle habitat.
The Koocher family is on a schedule with several other volunteers to check turtle nests in August and September, the season when baby turtles hatch. Typically, the babies would hatch and wander off on their own, but these nests are protected with wire so predators won't destroy them. The babies hatch inside the wire cages and need to be released by people. This gives scientists a chance to measure and weigh each baby and keep track of how many survive.
The Koochers are on duty every Wednesday evening this season, even in the rain, Diane Koocher said. It takes them about two hours to feel around in every cage, measure the babies and release them on the bank of a nearby river.
"Right when we let them go, they know how to swim instantly," Dustin said. "They're weird."
Susan Speak, an Ipswich teacher, has been coordinating these volunteer efforts for the past three years. She trains the "citizen scientists," as she calls them, and also spends hours in the field herself tracking the turtles.
The opportunities for citizen scientists to get involved in turtle research are growing, as turtle scientists awaken to the benefits of such programs. Massachusetts and New Hampshire both invite ordinary people to fill out forms whenever they spot a turtle, and turtle scientists and conservationists launched the Turtle Atlas of New England this past spring, a Web site where anybody can log their turtle sightings, even of dead turtles on the road.
Already one citizen entry in the atlas has tipped the scientists off to a Blanding's turtle in a part of Massachusetts where nobody knew the species lived. The atlas collected about 700 entries in its first year.
"What we're trying to do is get fundamental data in ways that would be impossible if we only had a few people," said Chuck Landrey, cofounder of the atlas and director of the Connecticut-based Turtle Conservation Project.
It's a tough time to be a turtle, the scientists say. For tens of thousands of years, turtles lived in the North of Boston area. Turtles can live to be 100 years old, if predators or traffic don't kill them prematurely. Only recently - within the lifetimes of some of today's turtles - have there been roads crisscrossing their territory and houses encroaching on their habitat. There is some evidence that their numbers are declining.
Preservation efforts are moving ahead full force throughout New England, though.
Conservationists say preserving turtle habitat does more than protect turtles. The Blanding's turtles North of Boston, for example, need vernal pools for food in the spring, warm sandy soil for laying their eggs and shady forest habitat to keep cool in the summer. If an area supports a population of Blanding's turtles, it probably also supports rare birds and butterflies, said Chris Bowe, a biologist who breeds endangered turtles at a sanctuary in North Andover.
"If you go into these beautiful areas you're going to see a whole network of these rare things," he said.
This region is notable not only for its rare turtles, but also for the turtle experts with ties here. Bowe is the only person in Massachusetts licensed to breed endangered turtles. Grgurovic, who is one of the leading Blanding's turtle experts in the nation, grew up in North Andover, and Mike Jones, one of the leading experts on the rare wood turtle, is from Andover.
"It's actually very exciting because there's such a large turtle community, it's growing and we live in such a special area," Bowe said.
The opportunity for more people to get involved in turtles is growing, Landrey said.
"This is a way that people can directly make a difference," he said. "They're helping do science. It's a way of participating other than just writing a check."
For the Koocher brothers, it's also an exciting way to spend a Wednesday evening.
"They're so cool," Travis said. "We don't want them all to be extinct."
Turtle crossing
One of the biggest threats to turtles is traffic. Blanding's 339, a turtle rescued this summer by volunteers, is just one example of a turtle injured by a passing car.
You can help protect turtles by driving carefully through turtle neighborhoods during their peak migration season, in May and June. If you see a turtle in the road, you can help it cross. Just follow these guidelines.
- Do not step into the road until you are sure it is safe. Never put yourself in danger to help a turtle cross the street.
- Cross the turtle in the direction it was heading, even if it was heading away from water or other good turtle habitat. The turtle knows where it's going. If you put it on the wrong side of the street it will walk right back into traffic again.
- Do not take the turtle to another location that you think is a better habitat. It will be totally disoriented. Chances are this turtle has lived in the same area for years if not decades, and crossed this road many times before.
- Do not try to help a snapping turtle across the road. You may get hurt. Do not pick up a snapping turtle by its tail because this can injure its spinal cord.
- If the turtle you see is a rare species, report the sighting to the Massachusetts Natural Heritage Endangered Species Program or the New Hamsphire Fish and Game Department.
Source: the Northeast Massachusetts Native Turtle Network
Become a "citizen scientist"
Scientists are recruiting volunteers from all over New England to look out for rare turtles and report what they see. Here are some ways to get involved:
Northeast Massachusetts Native Turtle Network, www.cs.umb.edu/~sspeak/ntnturtles/. Three researchers are recruiting volunteers to help study and protect several species of turtles North of Boston. In the spring, the volunteers watch the female turtles make their nests and then protect the nests from predators. In the fall they check the nests for hatchlings and release them into the wild. The Web site has dozens of turtle photos to help with identification.
Turtle Atlas of New England, www.turtleatlas.com. Amateurs are encouraged to enter their turtle sightings to contribute to the atlas, run by the Turtle Conservation Project and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The site includes turtle watching tips and links to state-specific resources.
New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Wildlife/Nongame/RAARP/reporting_NH_herps.htm. The state is asking citizens to report sightings of turtles, as well as salamanders, snakes, frogs and toads. It's best if you can get a photograph to document the siting, but all observations are welcome. Forms are available on the Web site.
Natural Heritage Endangered Species Program, www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/nhesp/nhturtle.htm. Massachusetts is keeping track of its turtles, too. This Web site gives general information about the state's turtles. To report a sighting, get a form at www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/nhesp/nhrprare.htm.
The saga of Blanding's 339
On the night of June 19, Ipswich teacher and turtle scientist Susan Speak called the Georgetown Police because an all-terrain vehicle came within 3 feet of a rare Blanding's turtle looking for a spot to lay her eggs.
Officer Dennis Sullivan, on his way to the scene, noticed another Blanding's turtle in the road nearby that had been hit. As Speak rounded the bend, she recognized the turtle through binoculars by the notches on her shell. It was Blanding's 339, one of the first Blanding's turtles she marked years ago, and a turtle she considered a friend. There are only 51 known adult Blanding's turtles in this population.
"It was absolutely heartbreaking to see her so severely injured," Speak wrote in her online turtle diary. The turtle's shell was cracked and she had lost a lot of blood.
This turtle had special meaning for rehabilitator Chris Bowe of North Andover, as well. She was the first Blanding's turtle he ever saw nest. He suggested putting her in a dark container until she could get help.
Blanding's expert Mark Grgurovic called veterinarians and duct-taped her top shell.
The turtle survived the first few days and moved to Bowe's sanctuary for rehabilitation. More than two months later, she was able to poke her head out of her shell and hold still for the children at the turtle picnic in Georgetown. She's not fully recovered, though.
Bowe has been giving her antibiotics and fluids and keeping her warm. She has lost a lot of weight and would probably drown if she was released to the wild right now because her legs are uncoordinated.
He sent her to New Hampshire for more intense rehabilitation, including possible surgery to remove impacted eggs. She will also be force-fed and given more antibiotics to clear up her infections. She may also have spinal cord injuries.
Still, Bowe is hopeful that the turtle will survive. If all goes well she could be released to the wild in another year.
If Officer Sullivan hadn't found her when he did, Speak said, she probably would have been hit by another vehicle and killed.

http://www.salemnews.com/lifestyle/local_story_261152638?keyword=topstory

DOVER COMMUNITY NEWS (New Hampshire) 28 July 06 Turtle neighbors take you back to long ago era (Susan Story Galt)
I've seen a lot more turtles this summer than I usually do. Even in July, which is later than the normal June nesting season, female turtles are moving around the are, searching for places to lay their eggs. And on sunny days, local ponds all seem to have turtles sitting on rocks, enjoying the sun. Sadly, none of these turtles I'm seeing have been in my own backyard, where I could enjoy watching them for a while. However, I know that a lot of people do have the backyard habitat to support turtles and I want you folks to know I envy you!
Depending on how you count, there are six or seven turtles found in New Hampshire. You are less likely to see four of them: Spotted, Common Musk, Blanding's, and Wood. Any Eastern Box Turtle you find now probably is not a native, but a released pet, although they used to be natives. The most commonly seen are the Eastern Painted Turtle and the Snapping Turtle.
The Painted Turtle, the most widespread turtle in the state and in all of North America, is the one you see sitting on a rock in the middle of a pond, basking in the sun. It has yellow stripes on its face, like the Common Musk Turtle, but the red markings around the edge of its shell identify it as a Painted Turtle. The back shell plates sit in straight rows on the shell. This turtle grows to between 4 and 10 inches long. Painted Turtles lay their eggs in June in clutches that usually include fewer than 10 eggs. These will hatch in September. The little hatchlings often overwinter in the nest. In the spring, they will leave the nest to head for the nearest body of water.
The Snapping Turtle is New Hampshire's largest turtle, growing to between 8 and 18 inches long. It is black all over, with no bright colors on its head or neck. You will also recognize it from its long, spiny tail. It has a powerful jaw and long neck, so you need to be careful if you need to handle it. The male Snapper grows much larger than the females, unlike most other reptiles, where the reverse is true. Snappers are mostly aquatic; they come on land only to lay their eggs or to travel to another body of water. They do not bask in the sun like Painted Turtles do. The female Snapper tends to use the same nest site year after year, laying a clutch of 20 to 30 eggs in June or July. (These are the turtles you see crossing roads, loyally trying to return to their usual nest site.) The eggs hatch any time from late August to early October. They, too, will often overwinter in the nest, or they may go look for water right away.
Both Snapping Turtles and Painted Turtles, along with all of the other turtles found in New Hampshire except the Wood Turtle, produce male or female young depending on the temperature around the egg at a certain crucial time in its development.
Females develop in the warmest and coolest areas, males in the temperature area in the middle. The sex of eggs of the Wood Turtle is determined genetically.
New Hampshire's turtles, like those in all northern states, take a longer time to grow than those in warmer climes because they need to hibernate in the winter. Some take as long as 20 years to reach reproductive maturity.
There are many threats to turtle populations in the state as development increases. Because turtles need water to live in and drier, upland areas for nesting, there is increasing risk to their population as small bodies of water and vernal pools are drained and filled, and larger land areas are paved or built upon. One study in Maine found some female turtles traveling a half mile to find nesting sites. Of course, this often includes crossing roads and open, unprotected fields.
If you have turtles in your pond, or have seen a female lay eggs in a nest next to your driveway (a favorite place for snappers) or in the mulch in your flower garden (another favorite place), you are one of the lucky people. You have a front row seat to observe beings that have changed very little since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Treasure and protect the shelled neighbors who live outside your backyard window to prehistoric sights.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/dover/07282006/nhnews-d-backyardwindow7-28.html

METROWEST DAILY NEWS (Boston, Massachusetts) 13 June 06 Turtle season crawls across region (Danielle Ameden)
Seasonal commuters are jamming up area roads with their slow pace and stubborn nature.
Officials are calling for patience.
Ashland police officers handled one such case yesterday.
"There was a large turtle in the road," said Lt. Scott Rohmer, whose department responded to the scene.
According to Ashland’s animal control officer, Cheryl Rudolph, the turtle was blocking traffic on lower Cedar Street for 10 minutes, but drivers stopped and the turtle was able to cross the street unharmed.
"It’s not unusual to have to deal with this," said Rohmer, adding that the department has responded to several similar situations of snapping turtles blocking or obstructing local roadways.
Biologist Marion Larson with the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife said June is "turtle month," when snapping, spotted, and painted varieties of the aquatic reptiles venture out of their wetland habitats to mate and lay eggs. Often, they end up traversing high-traffic areas, posing a danger to drivers and pedestrians.
Local police and wildlife authorities say the plodding creatures are known to cross roads while on their mission to lay their eggs.
"It’s such a common phenomenon for us," said Larson of MassWildlife in Westborough. "For many people, ’Wow,’ this is the first time they’ve seen anything like this. We often get calls from people saying, ’What do we do?’"
"We’ve been getting calls on them," said Keith Tosi, Natick animal control officer. "It’s that time of year."
Tosi, a 13-year veteran of the department, said residents call in saying they’ve spotted turtles digging around in their yards and mulch beds. "We just explain to the folks that it’s normal," he said.
"Usually (the turtles) do their thing and they’re off and running again."
Larson said the most help pedestrians or motorists can be is to move the turtle from danger’s way, without deterring it.
"If they aren’t hurt, it would be very nice if people slowed up," said Robin Shearer, a receptionist at Tufts Wildlife Clinic in North Grafton.
Shearer suggested pedestrians or motorists help turtles cross roads with a shovel or piece of cardboard.
Larson said turtles can be picked up from the back end of their shell, or pushed gently along. Many people have good intentions of moving the turtle out of harm’s way, she said, but attempting to redirect or relocate a turtle can actually put it in more danger.
"The best thing to do is to help it across the road or whatever dangerous spot," she said.
Shearer agreed, saying to keep the turtle heading in the direction in which it was traveling. "They’re pre-programmed and very stubborn. They will eventually just cross to where they’re going, putting themselves at risk again."
Local authorities advise people to exercise caution when handling the turtles.
"Even though they seem pretty listless, they can snap," Shearer said.
"They have such a hooked, hooked mouth," Larson said. "It’s really important not to mess with the front end of a snapping turtle at all."
"They just want to be left alone," Tosi said.
According to Larson, mother turtles find ideal nesting conditions in sandboxes, vegetable and flower gardens, and mulch piles where their eggs can be buried and protected from the elements during their 60- to 90-day incubation period. The baby turtles hatch on their own and instinctively know where to find food, water and shelter.
Since the start of turtle season at the end of May, two snapping turtles have been rescued by a team of veterinarians at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in North Grafton, Shearer said.
The turtles, one from North Grafton and the other from Concord, were found with shell and jaw trauma. Shearer anticipates many more injured turtles.
According to 2005 season statistics, the clinic saw 31 snappers, 40 painted turtles, four spotted, one wood, and three Blandings.
"We see a lot of cracked shells and head injuries," Shearer said, adding that many turtles at the clinic have more serious injuries.
"Depending on the severity of the fractures, (veterinarians) do have a lot of success in treating them, sealing them over and getting them back to the wild," she said.
A number of turtles with severe shell cracks and internal injuries are put to sleep, although a female turtle’s eggs are able to be harvested and incubated at the clinic.
http://www3.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=132682

MORNING SENTINEL (Waterville, Maine) 03 June 06 Trouble for turtles (Dave Sherwood)
Rob Johnston and Janika Eckert saw something alongside the Garland Road in Winslow last year they'll never forget.
A large snapping turtle had been struck by a vehicle. Its shell was cracked, and it was clearly dead.
Most alarmingly, it was far enough off the road that Johnston is convinced the driver would have had to swerve off the pavement to hit it.
Just the thought made the husband and wife cringe.
Intentional or not, automobiles are threatening the very existence of turtles in Maine.
"Road mortality is probably the greatest threat to the survival of turtles in Maine," said Philip DeMaynadier, endangered species specialist for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
The turtle Johnston and Eckert found measured 13 inches across its back, and may have been 50 years old, or more.
Two weeks later Eckert, while on a bike ride in the neighborhood, noticed two small humps in the gravel beside the spot where they had found the turtle.
"We realized she probably had a chance to lay eggs before she died," she said.
For the next three months, Eckert and Johnston, who live in Albion, would revisit the site, looking for any sign of hatchlings or activity.
One day in early fall, she noticed two small holes in the gravel humps -- likely dug out by the baby turtles as they made their escape into a nearby stream.
"It was really a life-changing event for both of us," said Eckert.
There are seven species of turtles in Maine. All but two -- the common snapping turtle and the the painted turtle -- are threatened. The others -- Blandings, spotted, Eastern box, wood, and common musk, are rare, and largely limited to southern Maine.
Loss of habitat and encounters with vehicles are the primary threats to their survival, according to DeMaynadier.
In 2002, concern for turtles led department biologists to close the commercial harvest of snapping turtles in the face of an almost insatiable demand for turtle meat in southeast Asia.
"We didn't have good population numbers on the species, and so we elected to take the conservative route," said DeMaynadier.
Overall, he said, snapping turtles are better off than most other species of turtles. Biologists consider them "habitat generalists," making use of ponds, marshes, bogs, slow-moving streams and rivers, and man-made impoundments. They also tend to wander less than other turtles, instead choosing a single body of water to spend most of their lives.
But early to mid-June is peak egg-laying season for female snapping turtles, that leave the water and wander nearby woods to look for nesting sites as soon as the weather warms in early summer.
"They're hardwired. This is something they've been doing for millions of years. They go out looking for nesting sites, and sometimes that takes them across roads," he said.
To make matters worse, female turtles often seek out roads for nesting.
"Road shoulders have loose, gravelly soil, and are usually out in the open, without a forest canopy. That really defines the ideal nesting site for a snapping turtle," said DeMaynadier.
It's a fundamental flaw in a battle plan that was developed millions of years ago by turtles, long before the invention of the automobile.
"In many cases, these turtles are crossing roads on migratory paths they had been taking long before these roads even existed," DeMaynadier said. The occasional road kill is standard for almost any species of bird or animal in Maine, but DeMaynadier said when it comes to snapping turtles, every one counts.
Turtles often live 50 years or more, and don't reach sexual maturity until they are almost 20 years old. They lay between 20 and 40 eggs a year, and often, entire clutches are destroyed or eaten by dogs, raccoons, fox, coyote, skunks and insects.
"Their whole strategy is to breed every year and replace themselves with just one or two successful hatchlings in their entire lifespan," said DeMaynadier. That often means that just one or two of more than 1,000 turtle eggs will survive over the creature's lifespan.
Thanks to an impenetrable shell, snapping turtles have no natural predators, so their survival strategy has remained unchanged over millions of years -- until now.
"What short circuits their whole evolutionary strategy is the new predator against which the shell is of no use -- car tires," DeMaynadier.
This year, Johnston and Eckert had another turtle experience. This one, though, had a happy ending. Last week, Johnston went out for a long-distance bike ride from his home in Albion. His route took him over the new Route 3 bridge in Augusta.
When he got to the west side of the bridge, he noticed a big, female snapping turtle -- larger than the one he'd seen last year -- motionless at the base of a 20-foot manmade gravel embankment beside the road.
Twenty-five miles from home and on a bike, he had no choice but to leave the snapper there, in the face of oncoming traffic and beside the insurmountable cliff.
When Johnston returned home, he told his wife about the turtle. They returned that night to find it in nearly the same spot. They brought it to Avian Wildlife Haven, a rehabilitation center in Freedom.
Owner Marc Payne received the turtle, placed it in a tub of water, and that week, dropped it off in Bangor, in a safe location where it would be free to migrate and lay eggs without fear of cars.
"It's not always the best solution, but in this case that turtle would have been playing Russian roulette every time it went to cross that new road. It'd probably been taking that route for years, and probably would have kept trying," he said.
Payne sees 20 or so turtles a year at the center. He said the biggest problem snapping turtles face is a lack of understanding among humans. He's seen snapping turtles stabbed by fearful fishermen, shells cut by lawnmowers. He'd also heard horror stories of people purposely running them over in cars.
According to DeMaynadier, snapping turtles are mostly harmless. They are omnivores, meaning they eat both meat and vegetable matter, but studies show that most of their diet consists of grasses. They're also docile, particularly in water, said Payne, who's worked with them for most of his career.
"They snap out of water only because it's the only defense they have," he said.
In all other respects, they are creatures as native to Maine as brook trout and chickadees.
"They're a primitive animal that has just become victim of our modern influence on their habitat. To me, they're a metaphor, an example of nature being disregarded. But they are really a magnificent creature," said Johnston.
Turtle Facts
Snapping turtles are reptiles, meaning they draw warmth from their surrounding environment.
Snapping turtles need fixed bodies of water to survive, but can live without water for 2 weeks.
The sex of hatchling snapping turtles is determined by the temperature of the soil in which they are incubated. Hotter temperatures mean more females, cooler temperatures lead to more males.
Snapping turtle meat is considered a delicacy in China and other Asian countries.
The commercial harvest of snapping turtles ended in 2002 in Maine, but snapping turtles may still be harvested for personal use.
Turtles are scavengers, and bottom feeders, and biologists caution that they accumulate heavy metals and toxins in their organs and fat.
Some scientists estimate that it takes 3,000 to 6,000 eggs over a lifetime for a turtle to replace itself
Turtle Crossing Tips
Be on the lookout when driving for snapping turtles crossing roads in low, wet spots from dawn to noon, then again in the evening.
If you see a snapping turtle crossing the road and wish to help, always herd it in the direction it is traveling, never turn it back. They always have a destination in mind.
If you need to move a snapping turtle quickly, pick it up by the back of the carapace, holding the head away from you. You may also throw a towel over its head while handling for safety.
Never hold a snapping turtle by the tail.
If you find an injured snapping turtle along the road, call the Avian Wildlife Haven at 382-6761 or see the web at:www.avian haven.org
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/sports/stories/2492574.shtml

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

STRAIGHT GOODS (Golden Lake, Ontario) 22 March 06 The voice of the turtle - Spring brings turtles out of hibernation, to lay eggs above the waterline. (Ole Hendrickson)
One Saturday last spring my partner and I were sitting under the cedars at the cottage, looking out over the Ottawa River. She spotted an odd-looking head protruding from the water, moving steadily past our rocky beach. "I think it's a turtle," she said.
At the start of a trip into town the next day we saw a female snapping turtle laying eggs in a sandy area alongside the cottage road, maybe 50 meters from the water. On Monday I was working alone at the cottage and I saw her again. She was stuck on our deck at the top of the steps leading down to the beach, unable to move forward or retreat.
Messing around with snapping turtles is generally not recommended. According to the website of the Kawartha Lakes Turtle Watch, they can rise up on their legs, rock back and forth, hiss with their mouths wide open, and lunge forward and snap with their powerful jaws.
However, this particular female seemed pretty harmless after her egg-laying expedition. I picked her up, carried her to the base of the steps, and watched her slow progress back to the river. Later that year I found a young turtle following in its mother's footsteps.
Winter survival is even more remarkable than turtle reproduction. Imagine spending months submerged in a frozen lake, half buried in the mud. Like frogs, turtles can get oxygen directly from the water. Unlike frogs, most of the turtle's body is covered by its hard, impermeable shell. Turtles breathe underwater through special patches, with lots of blood vessels, on their throats and near the base of their tails. They also slow their heart rate down to around one beat every ten minutes. A turtle's sleep is far deeper than any mammal's.
On rare occasions turtles wake up and swim under the ice in winter. Painted turtles sometimes emerge from hibernation before all the ice is gone in spring.
For a male turtle, hibernation isn't just about coping with long, cold winters. If it is prevented from hibernating — for example, kept indoors as a pet — it loses its ability to father offspring. Removing a turtle from the wild is a cruel act.
Although snapping and painted turtles are common here, the Ottawa River watershed is noteworthy for its large number of nationally-listed turtle species at risk. The spotted turtle is nationally endangered. Blanding's, spiny softshell, stinkpot, northern map, and wood turtles are also all at risk of extinction and have significant populations in the watershed.
The main threat to turtles is habitat loss. If you have waterfront property, maintaining or restoring natural shoreline vegetation is an excellent way to provide habitat for feeding and basking, and access to egg-laying areas. Other harmful habitat changes include development of upland nesting sites (sandy areas near water), use of herbicides, wetland drainage, river channelization and water impoundment.
All turtles lay eggs on the land, and some species (eg, wood turtles and spotted turtles) spend considerable amounts of time in moist forests. This, unfortunately, makes them vulnerable to illegal collecting for the pet trade, contributing to their decline.
Road kill is a significant cause of death for many turtle species. Adult females, which are particularly important for turtle survival, often choose roadsides for nesting. Here they can fall victim to vehicle traffic. Canada's leading turtle expert, Dr. Ron Brooks of the University of Guelph, warns that even 1-2 percent additional adult mortality from road kill can hasten extinction. Where local naturalists' clubs have put up turtle crossing signs, please drive with caution, especially in spring.
Aboriginal peoples recognize turtles as one of our most remarkable cousins. For many, turtles symbolize the world itself and are worthy of great respect and care.
Dr Ole Hendrickson is an ecologist and a founding member of the Ottawa River Institute, a non-profit, charitable organization based in Pembroke ON Canada. The ORI is aimed at fostering sustainable communities and ecological integrity in the Ottawa Valley and Ottawa River Watershed. For more information please visit the ORI website.
http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature6.cfm?REF=182

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