Snapping turtles gain recognition (Simon Shifrin)

TIMES HERALD-RECORD (Middletown), Snapping turtles gain recognition (Simon Shifrin)
Late this spring, Carmen Heitczman watched through a window as a small stony, snapping turtle inched across Orange Turnpike, backing up cars in both directions.
He scooped the prehistoric-looking creature up with a snow shovel, dropping it into a garbage can, after it plodded onto his Monroe property.
"Then we took a ride," he says.
Heitczman spends each spring yanking up snapping turtles by their leathery, lizard-like tails, carefully avoiding the creatures' powerful hooked jaws.
"If you grab the wrong end, you'll be missing a finger," he says.
He takes the captured creatures to nearby swamps and lakes, worrying that his grandchildren, ages 2 to 7, will want to pet them as they emerge from the one-acre pond on his land to deposit their eggs.
Travel about 45 miles west to Monticello, at the heart of Sullivan County, where village officials are asking hunters to remove the reptiles from a pond in DeHoyas Park. Participants in a recent fishing derby saw large bites taken out of some fish. A chomp from a snapping turtle's hooked jaw looks like a missing piece of pie.
"We'd rather not have the snapping turtles around," says Village Manager Richard Sush.
Snapping turtles are in lakes and ponds everywhere in the region and across the state, though not generally at New York's highest elevations, like the Catskill Mountains.
The state is beginning to track their numbers, along with other reptiles and amphibians.
"Snapping turtles are one of the (reptiles) we're most interested in getting better numbers on," said herpetologist Al Breisch in the Department of Environmental Conservation's endangered species unit. "They're found virtually everywhere in the state, even in New York City. They're very adaptable."
The animal earned protected status from the state this year. Hunters now need licenses to capture or kill snapping turtles.
It also gained recognition as the state reptile through another bill passed by the Legislature.
Vinnie LoCascio, president of the Sullivan County Conservation Club, finds himself trying to protect the turtles along roadways each spring.
"If you see them crossing the road, if you get one that's not smashed already, I pull over," he says.
The turtles, often covered in dried mud and moss -- "like a rock that came to life" -- will hiss at him. But, like Heitczman, LoCascio will grab them by the tail, toss them in the back of his pickup truck and drop them off in nearby water.
"It's hard for them to climb out," he says. "It's hard for them to do anything."

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