I agree. Where I grew up along the Hudson river it is tidal and brackish. In several of the swamps when I was a kid you used to find diamond back terrapin and in the higher swamp spotted turtles.

That was 20 years ago though and I haven't seen either species in 15 years or so. Why? Once they became worth something collectors would pick off the females as the were nest seeking, collect and incubate the eggs then sell the hatchlings and the females. You cant remove prime breeding adults from small pops for too long before the population crashes.

Now, they are still found in other places in the NE so are not extinct. But these special populations in kind of unusual places are. In times past these populations could have provided new depth to the gene pool. Now its gone. So are the collectors by the way. Who wants to collect all the RES left in the creek???

Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

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