NY Snapping Turtle Law Generates Buzz

All over the Internet, on Facebook, on blogs, on turtle forums and tortoise forums there are requests for New Yorkers to protest a proposed State Assembly bill that would allow trapping of snapping turtles.

I could not find any information on why these members of the New York State Assembly want to re-introduce the trapping of snapping turtles now. But I did find this informative article in the Baltimore City Paper explaining that trapping snapping turtles was banned in the state in 2009.

Ten years ago I researched an article on the global turtle crisis. Scientists and conservationists said that China’s increasing wealth had just about wiped out wild turtles not only in China, but throughout Southeast Asia. The Chinese were importing turtles from Africa and Australia. At the time scientists feared the crisis would reach the United States.

In the US, the southern states were the first to see turtle exports to China. Is the New York State bill an attempt to cash in on the trade? Current New York State law allows hunters to shoot the turtles with guns or arrow, but not live trap them. The Chinese market demands live turtles.

Snapping turtles are common in New York State and elsewhere. What made the global turtle crisis a crisis, however, is that the that the turtles started out common everywhere, but were quickly wiped out.

Read the Assembly bill here.
Read the Baltimore City Paper article here.

Photo: Snapping turtle by Chelsi Hornbaker, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

No Releases for Desert Tortoises

For decades, captive tortoises have suffered from a mysterious ailment known as “upper respiratory tract disease.” The disease was known in captive tortoises in Europe and the United States, according to information from the California Turtle and Tortoise Club.

Then, in the 1980s wild desert tortoises in California suffered a major die-off from the disease.

The threat of spreading that disease to wild tortoise populations in Arizona is one of the many reasons why the Arizona Game and Fish Department does not allow the release into the wild of tortoises that have been handled for any length of time. The department cares for as many of the tortoises as it can, and also runs an adopt-a-tortoise program.

Last year the department cared for over 40 tortoises at one time.

“I can’t stress enough how detrimental it could be for both the captive and wild tortoises to release a captive tortoise in the wild,” Zen Mocarski, a department public information officer said in an AZGFD newsletter. “Along with potential disease issues and displacement, captive tortoises are not prepared to find food and water in an unfamiliar area and often die.”

Read the AZGFD newsletter item, here. (It is the third story from the bottom.)
Read the California Turtle and Tortoise Club’s upper respiratory tract disease fact sheet, here.

Photo: This desert tortoise is in Nevada. Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Turtles, Cougars, and Frogs in the Southwest

The current issue of Southwestern Naturalist has several articles that may be of interest to biologists outside of the region.

Yellow mud turtles decline in the Midwest. The largest populations of yellow mud turtles in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri have experienced severe declines. Withdrawal of water from aquifers is the main cause, but the growth of woody plants also plays a role. Read the article, here. (Requires fee or subscription for full article.)
More info on yellow mud turtles from Texas Parks and Wildlife, here.

Cougar habitat in Texas and northern Mexico. Researchers from Sul Ross State University tested a model of current and potential cougar (Puma concolor) in Texas and northern Mexico and found that it worked. Read the article here. (Same for fees or subscription.)

Fungus strikes desert frogs. Chytrid fungus was found in desert oasis frog populations in Baja California Sur. The oases with higher infection rates also had bullfrogs and non-native crayfish. Read the article here.

Also interesting: Western red bats (Lasiurus blossevillii) and Arizona myotis (Myotis occultus) were found on the lower Arizona River after the area was restored. The Arizona myotis had been extirpated from the area, and the western red bat had not be found there previously. Read the article here.

Non-native Turtle Numbers Up Again in AZ

The Phoenix Zoo has been trying to get rid of the non-native turtles in the pond in the park near its entrance since 1999. The number of turtle species not native to Arizona found in the pond had declined over the last 13 years, but this year there was an increase. 142 non-native turtles were trapped, including 139 pond sliders, one spiny softshell, one painted turtle, and one eastern redbelly turtle.

Biologists believe that the turtles are released pets, saying that the turtles show signs of captivity.

The non-native female turtles that are trapped are brought to a turtle sanctuary for adoption, while the males are released back into the pond.

Read a brief story at CBS5 TV, here.
Read a more detailed release from the Arizona Fish and Game Department, here. (Second story from the bottom.)

Photo courtesy Arizona Fish and Game Department

Solar Flares Over Desert Protection

Which is more important, to save the global environment or to protect a particular ecosystem?

An article in the Los Angeles Times says that big, national environmental groups are leaning toward saving the planet even at the cost of rare and valuable ecosystems, frustrating local environmental groups who want to preserve those ecosystems.

The current arena is the Mojave Desert, where massive solar projects could provide power to southern California’s throngs, but where the fragile desert and its inhabitants would be better off being left alone.

With the big guns backing the solar projects, the only advocates for animals like the desert tortoise are the small, local enviro groups.

Read the article in the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Desert tortoise by Rachel London, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

Ranavirus Hits Maryland

An “alarming number” of tiny box turtles have been found dead in Maryland during a highway-construction relocation study, The Washington Post reports. The cause of death for 26 of the 31 turtles found dead is ranavirus, which shows measles- or herpes-like symptoms in reptiles and amphibians, the article reports.

The virus has also effected local frogs and salamanders, but turtles are the big concern because they breed much more slowly, the article says.

Scott Smith, a wildlife ecologist for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, is quoted in the article twice, including:

Smith of the Natural Resources Department said state wildlife officials are so concerned that they have applied for research funding from the Association of Reptile and Amphibian Veterinarians. State budgets are too strapped to fund the necessary research, he said.

Read the entire Washington Post article, here. It includes a link to a video of a gasping box turtle. Seriously.

This Extinction Countdown blog post from Scientific American from 2010, points to these journal articles on ranavirus:
2010 – Animal Conservation
Archives of Virology
Journal of Wildlife Diseases

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

Artificial Nest Sites for Wood Turtles

Scientists built an artificial nesting mound for wood turtles in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey when development and invasive plants made the original site less viable. A paper in the journal Northeastern Naturalist describes the successful transfer of nesting turtles from one site to the other. The mound has produced 142 nestling wood turtles in four years.

But more important than describing the success, the paper gives an idea what was required to produce it. The artificial mound was just 100 meters from the old mound. Nest-bound females were fetched from the old site and hand-carried to the new site. While one turtle returned to the artificial mound for the next three years, several others were brought back from the old site in another year.

Read the whole article, subscription or fee required.

Photo: cliff1066(TM) via Flickr

Irene Round-up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Did the Turtle Cross the Road?

bog turtle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The State of the Turtle

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

Larson thought the timing was excellent for a Year of the Turtle. The previous year, the state had teamed with the University of Massachusetts in a program to identify and monitor highway crossing sites that were difficult for turtles. The biologists wanted to provide more training, and to round up more volunteers.

In fact, says Larson, the state turtle biologists had plenty of fantastic information on the state’s turtles, and lots of already-scheduled events featuring turtles. The Year of the Turtle was a vehicle, Larson says, “for taking all the disparate pieces and putting them together into something bigger and more over-arching.”

In Connecticut, the Year of the Turtle also provided inspiration and a deadline for outreach biologist Kathy Herz. “I think it has been a really great effort for us. It’s nice to focus on a small animal that is often overlooked in favor of bigger animals like turkey and deer,” Herz says.

In Connecticut, the Year of the Turtle has meant a monthly press release on a different aspect of turtle conservation, a Year of the Turtle Web site, fact sheets on 12 Connecticut turtle species (including sea turtles), an children’s art contest, and an events calendar.

Both Herz and Larson say that the Year of the Turtle has been a success, with plenty of media interest, and other benefits as well. In Massachusetts, for example, 100 additional volunteers signed up for the turtle road-crossing monitoring project.

Herz is sold on the idea of turning the spotlight on an under-appreciated species or group of species. It focuses the public’s and the media’s attention on overlooked conservation issues, and inspires her to check projects off her to-do list that might otherwise be overwhelmed by more urgent issues or more popular creatures. She says, “I’m hoping we will do another species next year.”

Visit the Massachusetts Year of the Turtle Web site, here.

Visit the Connecticut Year of the Turtle Web site, here.

Arizona was one of the first states to support the Year of the Turtle program. Find its turtle page here.

Finally, back at the mothership, PARC featured state efforts in its August newsletter. Find that article in a PDF here.

Tomorrow, in honor of the year of the turtle, we’ll take a look at several turtle research projects.

Photo: Red-bellied cooter and painted turtle. The red-bellied cooter (the larger turtle in the picture) is the focus of an annual event in Massachusetts that was included in the state’s Year of the Turtle festivities. Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service.