Wildlife Conservation United States Project #15173

Help Save the Box Turtles!

by Piedmont Wildlife Center

Project Report | May 23, 2018
The Urban Turtle

By Sara Steffen | Director of Conservation

The Urban Turtle

On Sept 8, 2017 I walked out of my house as I had done most mornings over the past 10 years. But this morning was different. When I stepped outside on this beautiful fall morning in Raleigh, I saw something for the first time. To my amazement, a box turtle was looking at me from a mulched area in my tiny front yard. It was only a few feet from my neighbor’s driveway, on a street packed with townhomes and cars. In my head I couldn’t help but think, “oh my gosh! It’s going to get run over, I need to help it!” However, since I know box turtles, I knew this old guy was going to be just fine. He had quite a few years behind him.

I continued to ponder his life history. Was he born nearby? Did he get moved around by people who found him near the road? Is he older than the townhouses on the street that were built in the 1980s? So many questions! But ultimately, I snapped some photos for Turtle Trekkers and let him go on his merry way. Within 15 minutes, he was nowhere to be found.

I watched for him over the next couple weeks with no sightings, expecting to find him crushed by a car on the street. I didn’t see him again that fall, and then forgot about him over the winter. Over the past 10 years that I’ve lived in this townhouse, I’ve tried to make my yard as wildlife-friendly as possible. I have bird feeders and a bird bath in my yard. I removed invasive plants and replaced them with native plants. We leave brush piles, including a log pile which started from a leftover Christmas tree. Even though our yard is small, we’ve been able to invite many wildlife friends. We have seen the number of bird species continue to grow – and each year seems to bring another new visitor. We have seen numerous juvenile opossums, a few raccoons – your standard urban critters. In the past few years, we’ve also had a few lizard visitors, which my indoor-only cats love to watch.

As my husband was watching the backyard birds recently, I could hear him yell, “SARA THERE’S A BOX TURTLE!” I ran into the room to see, and there, right under our bird feeder, was a bright orange box turtle. I couldn’t believe it. Not only had I not seen a box turtle in 10 years, now we’ve found two! I rush outside with a ruler to take photos for turtle trekkers and then watch him leave on his own accord. Turtle’s vary in how brave they are around humans. This turtle had no fear. He didn’t close up in his shell, he didn’t run away too quickly, he just hung out while we snapped photos. After taking photos, I had to compare this photo to the photo from October. When I did, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The SAME turtle from October was back in my backyard on May 6, 2018.

I was able to determine the turtle was the same one based on its pattern, but what happens if the turtle’s pattern gets worn due to age or injury, like the photo below? Since we can’t always rely on pattern, our software looks at the size of the scales (or scutes) of the turtle and can determine the individual turtle based on the ratio of certain scales. The software is coming along nicely, and we’re almost ready to be trained by WildTrack so that we can input our own photos. So far, we’ve been having to send our photos to the folks at WildTrack. Training our staff and interns will take a lot of time off their hands and allow them to focus on some of our other obstacles. For example, what do we do when folks find turtles and they don’t have a ruler. Will a standardized item, like a credit card or key work as a scale? Once we figure out answers to these questions, we’ll start advertising heavily for Turtle Trekkers.

In the meantime, we hope you’re as excited as I am about finding box turtles in your yard. Next time you see one, remember, you too can be a Turtle Trekker!

Found Sep 8, 2017

Found May 6, 2018 (same markings)

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Feb 26, 2018
Help our Wild Neighbors

By Sara Steffen | Director of Conservation

"Mr. Boxie"

In North Carolina, Spring tends to arrive in mid to late February. Some of the trees start to bloom. The daffodils pop up, the birds start singing their hearts out. But, the biggest sign for me that tells me it’s spring is when the herps (reptiles & amphibians) start showing up. We’re eagerly awaiting the turtles to come up from brumation. They’ve spent the entire winter underground, conserving as much energy as possible. As they slowly wake up from their deep slumber, they too will be on the move. Searching for food, searching for mates, and searching for new hiding places.

I encourage you to be on the lookout for wildlife. Take a moment to step outside and look at the beautiful world around you. If necessary, take a trip to a local park. You don’t have to go far to find our wild neighbors. Sometimes, it just takes a bit of awareness to notice them. Our wildlife has had to adapt to living so closely to us, and we need to also adapt to living closely to them. Piedmont Wildlife Center is constantly educating people on how to coexist with wildlife. Our wildlife ambassadors teach how easy it is to help conserve the wildlife, and how even the misunderstood critters won’t hurt you if you respect them. I’ve never met a person that said “ew” or acted scared when I showed them a box turtle. These guys are lucky in the fact that people think they’re charismatic. However, this has also led to their decline. It seems whether you’re a charismatic or misunderstood critter, you’re at risk in the natural world.

So, I ask you, as a supporter of this project, how can you help raise awareness and teach others about coexisting with wildlife? If you hear your neighbor’s child, Judy, bringing a box turtle inside their home and exclaiming "I can't wait to take care of Boxie!", what would you do? Well, we know that judging and getting angry with people isn’t the way to get people to change their behaviors. One great thing about our program, Turtle Trekkers, is that we can encourage folks to become involved in protecting Box Turtles. We know that Judy loves box turtles, but her human instincts are doing more harm than good. If we teach Judy about Turtle Trekkers, she can learn to not only interact with the turtle and have a special moment with it, but she can also protect them for future generations. Remember that just like us, you can help spread awareness and help conserve our wild neighbors. And it all starts with just stepping outside and looking around. Happy Spring!

On the move

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Turtle Trekkers

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Nov 28, 2017
It's the Year 2117

By Sara Steffen | Director of Conservation

Baby Turtles Donate

Picture the year 2117. 100 years from now. What do you think the earth will look like? Will it be destroyed and barren? Will our green spaces be non-existent? Or, do we have a chance to turn around the destruction of our environment? Do we still have a chance to educate individuals on the importance of saving the ecosystems we have now and even restore previously developed areas? With your help, we can paint a beautiful picture for future generations of 2117. Let’s leave them with an Earth much better than we found it, and thriving with all sorts of creatures, including the charismatic box turtle. The box turtles are counting on us, and now is our chance!

The end of the year brings thoughts of a new beginning. It’s a time for us to re-visit our goals for Turtle Trekkers and figure out how to have an even greater impact in 2018. The turtles need your help to spread the message of our citizen science project. We need more people to get involved, so we can start documenting the turtles that aren’t tucked away in a safe park. 2018 will be a year of advertising & analyzing for the project.

We had some changes this year in regards to the turtles we are tracking. We lost our long-timer, “ABP,” but we added 2 new turtles to our research. “HJR” and “JMP” were the two lucky turtles who received brand new transmitters this summer. “JMP” has already traveled 300 meters from where we first tagged him. He seems to be moving towards our elusive turtle, “ALM” who hasn’t been on park property for a couple of years. One finding we’ve observed is that these turtles will hibernate in the same (or very similar) location year after year. For at least the past 2 years, each one of our turtles has chosen the same hibernation area. While we haven’t analyzed this data yet, this could reinforce the idea of how “home-bound” box turtles really are. Hopefully you’ve heard that box turtles shouldn’t be relocated away from their homes, due to their impressive homing instinct. This hibernation data could be a new piece of the puzzle to support the “home-bound” theory. With more data to support these theories, we get closer and closer to securing legal protection for these turtles.

One challenge we have faced is the time and skill it requires to analyze thousands of data points. With collaboration from university professors, statisticians, and students we hope to be able to analyze our data so that we can publish new results and support current theories. We’re looking forward to a great 2018 and hope we find more turtles than ever!

I’ll leave you with a quote from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. It’s a well-known quote, but one that needs repeating. Over and over. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

New Turtle "HJR"

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