TURTLE TIME.

So much for my New Years Resolution of posting something on my blog every week - hah! I never was any good at New Years Resolutions that's why I don't usually bother making any. I must confess I have been seriously thinking over the last few weeks of just not doing my blog any more. I never seem to find the time to sit down and write well and I end up being dissatisfied with my posts, especially when I read other peoples wonderful blogs. I also seem to write too much about my work and not much about anything else, god what a dull person! But then I speak to my parents in England on the phone at the weekends and they tell me how much they enjoy reading it and miss it when I don't write and I remember the reason I started the blog in the first place. So here I am again, trying to catch up with myself and yes, I am blogging about work again :(
As some of you know, I am involved in Blanding's Turtle Conservation. Last fall we began what I hope will be a long term survivorship study of turtles that we have been headstarting and releasing. We release somewhere in the region of 200 young turtles per year but we really have no idea if any of them are actually surviving, hence the need for the study. Our headstarted turtles are two years old when we release them, at that age they are about four or five inches long. In order to track them we have to equip them with a radio transmitter. Because they are so small the transmitter has to be tiny in order not to hinder their movement at all and because the transmitters are so tiny, so are the batteries that power them. These batteries last for approximately six to seven months. We release the young turtles in October, they go into hibernation, usually until late March, early April and then we begin tracking them. Of course with the winter we have had, everything is running a little late this year and so it was late April before we could get out to track them and then we are up against the end of the battery time for the transmitters.
Anyway, we finally got out. The weather was great even if the water was still frigid! But hey that is when neoprene chest waders really become your best friend. 'We' consists of yours truly and my two partners in crime, Jamie and Dan.


We met up bright and early at an 'undisclosed location' (one of the plethora of protocols involved with working with an endangered species is not discussing specific site locations) and waded off into the marsh to begin searching for radio signals transmitted from the young turtles we released last year.


It is always good to start the day on a positive note and we were very fortunate that the first few individuals we tracked were found alive and well.


Each individual was thoroughly checked over for injuries and the GPS location it was found at recorded.


One of the reasons that this project was started in the first place was because when the Blanding's turtle habitats were surveyed there was a reasonably steady population of adult turtles that would appear annually but there was never any hatchlings, juveniles or sub-adults found and it became very apparent that they were falling victim to increasingly heavy predation. So we knew that we were not going to only find fit healthy turtles. The first casualty of the day that we found was something of a mystery because it appeared as if this little turtle had literally died five minutes ago.


It had no marks on it that suggested a predator attack, it was in water and yet showed no signs (or smell) of decay and its transmitter was still intact and signalling strongly. We kept it to conduct a necropsy but I suspect we will never know what happened to that one.
More common casualties were victims of predation, the primary culprits being raccoons and mink. Sometimes we found a twisted and chewed transmitter, minus the turtle


And sometimes we found a twisted and chewed transmitter attached to a shell, minus the turtle! Which is always a very sad moment but, of course inevitable.


In amongst tracking the young turtles we checked in on some of our resident females who were also just coming out of hibernation. We will be monitoring them over the coming weeks and when they are found to be gravid we will put them into laying pens so that they can lay their eggs without fear of predation.


All the females that we found seemed to have come through the long hard winter in good health which is always positive news as they provide us with future generations.


In amongst tracking the Blanding's Turtles we did happen upon a good size Snapping Turtle and I just couldn't resist checking him/her out!


Now in case you are wondering, for those of you not familiar with this species, there is a very good reason why these turtles are so named and with an individual of this size there is really only one really safe way to pick them up if you value your fingers!!!


With most turtles you can hold the edges of the shell between the front and back legs quite safely. Lets just say the Snapping Turtles have extremely long necks................


Having returned the snapper to his basking spot and kept all ten of my digits we returned to the business in hand and continued tracking the young hatchlings.
We had a great day, nine hours out in the sun wading about in a marsh isn't a bad days work and from initial findings we seem to be currently getting a forty percent survival rate for our newly liberated turtles which is a huge improvement on zero percent.



Our next task will be tracking the survivors again and equipping them with new radio transmitters to last them through the summer.


Photo Credits - J. Forberg & CJT

BLANDING'S TURTLE CONFERENCE

How is it that something I feel like I did yesterday is already two weeks ago? Oh well, better late than never I guess.
I have done various posts about the Blanding's Turtle conservation work I do. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a conference devoted solely to this species. As with any group work focusing on an endangered species you tend to swing between being wildly inspired to keep on doing what your doing and being hugely depressed at the seemingly impossible odds you seem to face to preserve this species.
I won't bore everyone with an account of the numerous lectures, I'll just skip right to the fun stuff - the field trips. On the first day we visited Nachusa Grasslands. This is a huge, beautiful rolling expanse of restored prairie.


There have been numerous reptile species sighted here but we were on the lookout for one particularly elusive little gem, the Ornate Box Turtle.


And, as you can see, we were lucky. This delightful little creature is listed as threatened in Illinois so it really was a privilege to be able to see one in it's natural environment.



This little female was carefully examined and aged at approximately six or seven years old. When we had all admired her she was replaced gently back into the clump of grass where we had found her.


Our second field trip, at the end of the conference was to the Richardson Wildlife Foundation. This is a piece of land that has been bought up over several years by a private individual.


It was initially intended to be a private hunting area but over time the owner came back from the dark side and now focuses on conservation of the species on his land and restoration of the native habitat.


There have been a few sightings in recent years of Blanding's Turtles on this land so a couple of days before we arrived the resident ecologist had been kind enough to set up a series of turtle traps in the various wetland areas.


These are fairly basic, humane contraptions that are anchored semi-submerged and baited with tinned sardines (!) and are extremely effective. Of course they are also totally indiscriminate and will lure in anything with a taste for sardines! - like gargantuan catfish


Or very cranky Snapping Turtles


But most commonly, Painted Turtles


In fact one trap in particular held enough Painted Turtles that we all got one for our group photo!


One Snapping Turtle had managed to force its way out through the side of one of the traps and get stuck so by the time we got it, it was having a serious sense of humour failure!


And was just about ready to amputate any fingers that got too close


We did manage to extricate it without anyone loosing any digits though


When we released it, it did stay around long enough to pose for the cameras!


Eventually our patience was rewarded and the real stars of the show put in an appearance.

Two mature, relatively unmarked female Blanding's Turtles.


As these were previously unrecorded individuals the first priority was to get a DNA sample from each of them so a small amount of blood was drawn from each turtle. One of the problems of working with endangered species is very often with a greatly reduced population comes the inevitable issue of a lack of genetic diversity so it is important that a genetic record of every known individual is kept.


As neither of the turtles were equipped with radio transmitters we also needed a record of identity for each of them. The most effective way of doing this is to take a photograph of the plastron.



Then, just because they are so beautiful we took a picture of their more photogenic angle!



Then we released them back in the same spot from were they came and watched them quickly slip below the waters surface and go back to their precarious existence.
I really do hope that this charming and elusive creature will be around the Midwest for a very long time to come.
I came away from the conference with a very long 'to do' list and the cautious hope that maybe we can save this beautiful turtle species.


Photo Credits - CJT & J Forberg

HOUSE OF HERPS

How exciting, a new blog carnival, and one that is near and dear to me! Bugs and Birds get all kinds of sites but at last the Herps get their own spot to shine :) Don't get me wrong, I enjoy lots of Bug and Bird sites but it is most definitely a good thing that we now have a place to celebrate the Herps too at House of Herps.

Those of you who follow my blog know that I am actively involved in Blanding's Turtle Conservation Restoration. So they seemed like an obvious choice for my first post for the House of Herps. Not that this is a particularly busy time of year as far as field work goes. Hopefully all the turtles we released in the fall are buried down deep in the mud, out of harms way and we won't be going out tracking them again until it warms up, probably around mid May.


Then we will don our chest waders and plod off into the wetland and see how many of them we can track down.


In the mean time here at the Museum we continue to work to raise public awareness about the perils that this particular species faces. We have a wonderful custom-made tank where we show several hatchlings from this year as well as a couple of juvenile females that will eventually become part of the captive breeding program.


The tank is fitted with one-way glass so that the hatchlings will not get too habituated to humans before they are released, and their growth rates are carefully monitored.


We have just started a new public program timed to coincide with when the status of the Blanding's was elevated in the state of Illinois from threatened to endangered. The program educates visitors about why this species is struggling, the work that is being done throughout the state to help it and the ecology of this 'Great Lakes Turtle.'
Along with so many other organizations, we were hit by funding cuts this year which meant that the turtles we released in October were not equipped with the usual radio trackers. At $200 a pop, it is an expensive business! Instead we had to rely on carefully photographing the plastron of each individual prior to release, in the hopes that if one of them should wander into one of our traps in the future we will be able to identify it from the photo. Not an ideal system as the patterning does change over time.


In order to try and be better prepared for fall 2010 we have just launched a fund-raising scheme to encourage people to help with the work we do. We are going to use any monies raised to purchase more radio trackers for the turtles released in October.


With the extra transmitters we will be able to get a much more accurate picture of survival rates. It is also often possible even if a turtle doesn't survive to track down the transmitter and work out the cause of death. All this information will help us to create environments that will give this enigmatic creature the best chances of survival in an increasingly perilous world.




Photo Credits - CJT, & Vincent

FOND FAREWELLS

It has come to the time of year again when we get to release our headstarted Blanding's Turtles into the wild at last. (For more details about this project, check out these posts.)
As has been a common theme with most of our field work this year, it was a cold, windy, wet day.


So what better thing to do on such a day than put on the trusty chest waders and splash about in a marsh for a few hours?


OK, yes, I am a little crazy! We had some of our two year old turtles to release and also some one year olds.


As with so many other things, funding for restoration projects has been rather thin on the ground this year so, unfortunately none of our two year olds will be equipped with radio transmitters this year. We have to rely on photographing the plastron just prior to release which is not a totally fail-safe form of ID as they do gradually change over time but still it is better than nothing.


Each turtle has a number which identifies its egg number within the clutch and its mother


Before it is released this number is blacked out to make it less conspicuous to potential predators


The GPS coordinates of the release spot for each individual is recorded along with its number and then it is into the water and off to freedom and a big new world


It is always fun to see how each individual responds to this big moment. Many of them bob around on the surface for a while, gazing down into the water. Some just dive straight down and disappear from sight immediately but we had one little guy this year who really didn't seem too keen on the whole idea at all. He immediately hauled out onto a stick and didn't seem to want to swim away.


He eventually got the idea though and away he went.
Of the two year olds that we have been working with for the last year there were also some very distinct characters. Number 89 was the thug of the group, the biggest and most aggressive, always first in line for food and beating up the other turtles and stealing their food.


All characteristics which although hard to love, should stand him in good stead for surviving in the wild and he was raring to go!


On the other end of the scale was little number 1. Always the smallest, always getting beaten up by the others but still feisty enough to get enough food. In this picture you can see the end of its tail is missing, bitten off during one of the scuffles! Also a scar on the rear right leg from a particularly vicious bite it received.


We saved number 1 until last to release and we indulged in a major photo session, rather like turtle paparazzi but in true celebrity style number 1 took it all in good grace


Then it was time to say good bye and let nature work its magic


These young turtles are all well fed so all they will need to do now is burrow down into the mud and hibernate until next spring when we will wade out into the marshes once more and see if we can find any of them - good luck guys, hope to see you next year!


Photo Credits - CJT