Wildlife Conservation United States Project #15173

Help Save the Box Turtles!

by Piedmont Wildlife Center

Project Report | Dec 20, 2016
Turtle Trekkers are waiting for Spring to arrive!

By Sara Steffen | Conservation Coordinator

Box Turtle Hiding

Now that winter is settling in, we won’t be finding box turtles for a while. Even though our temperatures fluctuate often – between 70 degree days one day to freezing rain the next, box turtles continue to brumate. Some other reptiles (such as our native snakes) will come out of brumation and sun themselves on warm days and even look for something to eat. However, box turtles stay in brumation the entire winter, no matter how warm it gets.

We still track the box turtles occasionally during this time, just to make sure they haven’t moved for some reason. Occasionally box turtles will emerge from brumation due to illness, but there chance of survival is low if this occurs.

This winter, we will be gearing up our Turtle Trekker program to get ready for their emergence in the spring. We will create marketing materials to encourage citizens to engage in the program and to actively search for box turtles in their neighborhoods. We already have plans to promote Turtle Trekkers at local citizen science fairs in the spring. We are also promoting the project during every animal program we present at a school or during an on-site field trip. Our captive turtle ambassadors are very helpful with this part. Without interested citizens, our program will not be successful, so a large part of our time will be spent on promoting the project. Your contributions will help us print materials, create advertisements, and actively engage local schools.

We recently met with WildTrack again to see the status of the photo ID software. All year we have been collecting photos of box turtles (with rulers – see the attached photo) to determine if the software can accurately identify individual turtles. We took multiple photos of 34 turtles. The program was unaware that there were 34 individual turtles when we uploaded 281 images to the program. Based on specific measurements of the scutes (scales in turtle language), the program detected 34 individual turtles out of the 281 images with a 100% probability! That’s a pretty smart program! Sky, of WildTrack, said “There is a very high likelihood that this will work for a larger population. As we increase our database we will find out!!” The program can also determine the probability of there being 33 turtles (a 29.7% chance) or 35 turtles (only a 3.8% chance). That is, the computer knows it’s most likely correct. This tells us that as we add on more photos the program will determine if the photo is a new turtle or if it’s a turtle already in the database. If the turtle is already in the database the program will be able to tell you which turtle it is. Pretty amazing!

So, once we have enough Turtle Trekkers we will need to start collecting photos. This is another tricky part. The photos will have to be clear, include a ruler, and there need to be at least 2 photos taken of the top of the shell (carapace). Without these, we cannot run the photos through the program. The ruler is very important since the program is looking at scute measurements. So, if you love box turtles, and want to join our project – remember these steps!

Find a box turtle.
Make sure you have a camera and a ruler.
Place the ruler next to the box turtle. Check the photos below for examples.
Take a minimum of 2 photos of the the carapace (top of the shell), preferably more.
Take a minimum of 1 photo of the plastron (bottom of the shell)
Make sure you have a GPS location (or address, or nearest intersection)
Send the photos and GPS to Turtle@Piedmontwildlifecenter.org

Although we are focusing on populations of box turtles in Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh, North Carolina at the moment, this program could help determine populations of turtles across the east coast and even across the world! For that reason, you can submit photos even if you are outside of the Triangle region of North Carolina. We will keep your photos in a separate database to analyze at a later time.

Go ahead and tell all your friends about Turtle Trekkers now, and once spring arrives you can remind everyone to start looking for turtles whenever they are outside! Don’t hesitate to e-mail Sara if you have questions about the project. As always, thank you for your support!

Photo Example for Turtle Trekkers - carapace

Photo Example for Turtle Trekkers - plastron

A New Turtle Trekker - why we need a ruler!

Links:

Permalink

Sep 26, 2016
Why do we care about tracking turtles?

By Sara Steffen | Conservation Coordinator

Turtle "AOW" in his habitat

All animals need food, shelter, space, and water to survive. But how much of each of those things do they need? This is the main objective of our box turtle tracking program. There is very little data on how much space box turtles need to survive. We started using radio telemetry in 2011 to track box turtles in Leigh Farm Park in Durham, NC. Four of the turtles that entered our program in 2011 are still alive and part of our tracking program (see image above). According to the literature, this is longest that any box turtle has been tracked.

Although a sample size of four is not what we prefer (we need many more than this) in our study, this is just the beginning. We’ve added more turtles to our project as some of our previous turtles either perished or their transmitter batteries died prematurely, or the epoxy didn’t hold. Unfortunately, research usually isn’t perfect, especially when working with wild animals. You can see the home ranges of the new turtles in the second photo. Along with this info, we have determined their home range in acreage. For a long time, biologists thought that turtles only needed about 1 acre to survive. Although this may be true, we can see that turtles with more space available to them use that space. However, we don’t know what turtles are doing when they have little space, like in a neighborhood. If there is only an acre available to them, will they seek out a larger area elsewhere? Will they survive to the ripe age of 50? This is what we hope our photo ID app can help us determine. To protect turtles for future generations, we need to understand more about their habitat requirements.

One interesting turtle in our study is “ALM.” She has used the most space and seems to be settled in a new location than when we found her in 2011. Do you see the neighborhood in the middle of her home range? She used to stay on the west side of this neighborhood, similar to “LOP.” For the last year she has been on the east side of the neighborhood. So why the move? In short, we don’t know. Some of our conservation interns have these theories of why she has moved.
                “She may have been found on a road in the neighborhood and moved.” - Matt
                “Maybe she needed to find a new habitat with more food available to her.” -Becca
                “She may have washed down a creek in a heavy storm.” - Debbie

In short, we need to continue to research turtles so we can understand more about their habitat requirements and their movement. Although we may know a lot about the box turtle itself, we know very little about what they need to survive. Without this knowledge, future conservation of box turtles is limited. We also need YOUR help to help us find box turtles outside of the park. Get involved with our Turtle Trekkers program today and make sure you tell all your friends!

The four turtles tracked between 2011-2016

All turtles currently being tracked

Summer intern, Emma, gathering data on a turtle

Links:

Permalink

Jul 1, 2016
Thank you for your support!

By Sara Steffen | Conservation Coordinator

Turtle "AKV" found nesting during a field trip!

Thank you so much for your support of our Box Turtle Project! With your help we were able to raise $9,780!! This money has helped us purchase transmitters and new receivers in order to track 9 box turtles at Leigh Farm Park over the past 2 years. Your help has also allowed us to present at a box turtle conference, educate about the importance of conserving box turtles, and expand our citizen science project!

We have found multiple nest sites over the past 2 years and have been able to keep the nests protected with predator guards. Just last week we found a box turtle nesting with a field trip group. After telling the kids they needed to look for a camouflaged animal, one of the kids exclaimed “No Way! Is that turtle….laying eggs!?” Most of these children had no idea there were any turtles that lived on land, especially when there were no ponds nearby.

Our new focus is on our Neighborhood Turtle Watch – Turtle Trekkers. With this citizen science project we will be reaching out to local neighborhoods to pass out information regarding our project. We will also be educating students and teachers at local public schools, churches, camps, and events! We are excited to get individuals involved as Neighborhood Watch Leaders and will need to give the leaders supplies to take photos. The leaders will also be an important piece of project by recruiting new individuals to the Turtle Trekkers project.

We are still working with WildTrack on our photo ID app. This app will allow us to identify individual turtles without having to use tools to mark their shell. This is as minimally invasive as it gets, and fun! All you will have to do is take a photo and voila, you will see if your turtle has been found anywhere else! We are still in the development stage of the photo ID app. Once we have enough photos to test it out, we will be able to input citizens’ photos and determine if any of the turtles have been photographed more than once. These photos help us gather data so that we can determine how many turtles are living in North Carolina. This technology is new and could simplify the way we study wildlife populations.

Adam shows the kids a turtle with a transmitter.

Turtle "CHO" among the grape leaves

Links:

Permalink

‹ 1 ... 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.