Nieuws artikelen Clemmys guttata (spotted turtle)

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BAY WEEKLY (Annapolis, Maryland) 28 February 08 Reptile Rules - New state regulations protect creatures that , 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 

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CHATHAM DAILY NEWS (Ontario) 31 July 07 Accused in illegal turtle-hunting case out on bail
A 54-year-old Wallaceburg man charged in connection with allegedly hunting turtles and frogs was recently released on a recognizance.
Pak S. Chung, of no fixed address, faces the following charges under the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act: two counts of unlawfully selling specially protected wildlife, two counts of transporting wildlife taken contrary to the Act, two counts of hunting or trapping specially protected reptiles, taking bullfrogs during closed season, taking snapping turtles during closed season, hunting or trapping reptiles without a licence, hunting or trapping amphibians without a licence and failing to comply with an order under the Act.
He will stay with a surety in Scarborough and must report to the Toronto Police once a week.
According to previously published reports, the Ministry of Natural Resources charged two people on July 10 in connection with hunting turtles and frogs, which allegedly occurred in Chatham-Kent and on Walpole Island.
The other person charged hasn't been named as he hasn't appeared in court.
Open season on snapping turtles is July 15 to Sept. 15 and bullfrogs can be hunted from July 21 to Oct. 15.
Snapping turtles and bullfrogs are typically used for food.
Some of the turtles alleged involved include the endangered spotted turtle and are usually found in the pet trade.
Chung is scheduled to return to provincial court Oct. 3.





http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/webapp/sitepages/search/results.asp?contentid=633864&catname=Chatham-Kent&type=search&search1=frogs

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TELEGRAM & GAZETTE (Worcester, Massachusetts) 05 February 07 Turtle protectors to come out of shells - Athol nature group to host ‘Year of the Turtle’ author at conference (George Barnes)
Amherst: The wind chills are below zero, snow coats the ground, and little more than a few snowshoe hares can be seen out and about.
It seems like a perfect time to talk turtle.



The Massachusetts Turtle Symposium, planned for Feb. 23 and 24 from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the University of Massachusetts Campus Center, will offer those who attend a chance to learn the state of turtle populations in the state and what can be done to protect them.
The Athol Bird and Nature Club is the lead organization planning the event, working with the University of Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources and several state and federal agencies.
Susan Cloutier of the Athol Bird and Nature Club said the event will feature keynote speaker David Carroll, author, artist and MacArthur Award winner.
Mr. Carroll is the author and illustrator of three widely acclaimed natural histories, based on his extensive fieldwork in wetlands. They include “The Year of the Turtle,” “Trout Reflections and Swampwalker’s Journal,” and the semi-autobiography “Self-Portrait with Turtles.”
He is also an artist, and his botanical and forestry paintings have earned him awards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the International Society of Arboriculture. In 1999, he received an Environmental Merit Award from the Environmental Protection Agency, and in 2006 he was named a MacArthur Fellow for “helping people of all ages see the beauty, history, and value in swamps, bogs, kettle ponds and rivers.”
Mr. Carroll will speak at a dinner event Friday night.
Mrs. Cloutier said she organized the event to place a focus both on turtles and on the need to preserve the habitat they live in. She said it will also give her a chance personally to learn more about turtles. She said she has been doing field work entire life, studying many things in nature, but she knows little about turtles.
“I’m going to be learning a lot,” she said.
Mrs. Cloutier said one of the reasons the symposium is being held in February is that all is quiet on the turtle front this time of year.
“In March, the spotted turtles start coming out,” she said, adding that once the turtles come out for the spring, Mr. Carroll would be busy with field work and likely unavailable as a speaker.
Along with her involvement with the Athol Bird and Nature Club and the Millers River Environmental Center, Mrs. Cloutier also works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Silvio O. Conte Wildlife Refuge in Turners Falls. The wildlife refuge is also sponsoring the event, along with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, the University of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Natural History and Endangered Species Program and Hyla Ecological Services, a private environmental firm that specializes in rare species surveys and habitat assessment.
Speakers will focus on several types of turtles and their habitats, including spotted, musk, snapping, box, Blandings, Diamond-backed and sea turtles.
Mrs. Cloutier said the turtle symposium is geared to landowners, land managers, teachers, foresters and naturalists. Among the presenters will be Leigh Youngblood of the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust in Athol.
The symposium is also an opportunity for teachers, foresters and conservation commissioners to earn credits toward advance degrees.
The full agenda for the symposium and a registration form are available online at www.millersriver.net/turtles. Participants may register for one or both daytime sessions and for the Friday night banquet. Limited scholarships are available. Information in the scholarships may be obtained by e-mail at abnc@millersriver.net. There is an additional fee for registering after Feb. 16.
Mr. Carroll, presenter Barbara Brennessel, and other authors will be available Friday for book signings. Ms. Brennessel, the Goldberg professor of biology at Wheaton College, is the author of “Diamonds in the Marsh: A Natural History of the Diamondback Terrapin.”

http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070205/NEWS/702050354/1003/NEWS03

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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

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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

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