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MILFORD DAILY NEWS (Massachusetts) 03 June 06 Turtles less tasty target after growth spurt (Jon Brodkin)
Westborough: They begin life the size of a quarter, easy prey for fish, frogs and birds looking for a snack.
But the endangered Northern red-bellied cooter, a type of turtle, is finding it easier to survive in the wild thanks to high school students and scientific facilities that raise them in captivity until the reptiles are big enough to avoid predators.
Nine months after removing turtles from the wild as hatchlings, volunteers gathered yesterday at the state Fisheries & Wildlife headquarters to weigh and measure 156 cooters and mark their shells. The turtles will be released into the wild Monday in Middleborough.
Eating romaine lettuce every day, the turtles grew as fast as a baseball player taking steroids.
"They’re sort of like little Barry Bondses with shells," said Tom Eldridge, a science teacher at North Quincy High School who led one group of students in raising the turtles. "They get big enough that not a lot of things can fit them in their mouths."
The turtles are classified as endangered in Massachusetts and by the federal government. In the Bay State, they are found only in Plymouth County, completely isolated from other populations in mid-Atlantic states, according to MassWildlife.
In 1984, there were only a few hundred adult red-bellied cooters in the state, because eggs and hatchlings were being snatched up by predators.
"There were big adults but no youngsters coming along to take their place. It turns out they were being eaten by bullfrogs and pickerel and so forth," said Dave Taylor, who has been helping students raise the turtles at Triton Regional High School in Byfield for a dozen years.
Taylor retired from his job as a science teacher a couple years ago, but stayed on to lead the Triton kids, who raised four turtles this year. They are kept in 83-degree water, which must be changed frequently.
"They’ll foul a tank in 24 hours," Taylor said. "It’s romaine lettuce in, romaine lettuce out, and the tank gets gross."
Despite a certain amount of filth, Ally Davis says she’ll miss the baby turtles. Just graduated, Davis made the trek to Westborough yesterday to see them off.
"I’ve gotten attached to them," Davis said. "This is something I’ve done every day since October. I’m always around them."
The "Headstart" program began in the mid-1980s and has released more than 2,000 turtles into the wild. Once they achieve a safe size, the turtles are released into the same ponds they were taken from, Eldridge said.
Organizations that help give the turtles a head start include the New England Aquarium, Museum of Science and the EcoTarium in Worcester.
From head to tail, the turtles have grown to a length of about six inches. Eventually, they’ll be a foot long and weigh 10 pounds, said John Berkholtz, senior zookeeper at Zoo New England. They are the second largest freshwater turtle in the state, smaller only than the snapping turtle.
"When they’re that size there are very few, if any, predators who would go after them," Berkholtz said. "When they’re first hatched out, they’re only the size of a quarter so they can be easily picked off by predators."
Turtles less tasty target after growth spurt

This is such a great story, I wish there were more headstart programs throughout the U.S.. The amount of predation by animals is catastrophic on redbellies. I have seen so many nests dug up by raccoons. It can make a huge difference with headstarting them. Great story.