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WHIG-STANDARD (Kingston, Ontario) Don't run over nature
The animal lies dying as I compose this e-mail.
At 1:30 p.m., I received a telephone call from a co-worker at another office who had just been travelling down Highway 15. He told me that a large turtle was trying to cross the road at the entrance to Canadian Forces Base Kingston. Would I please go help the animal cross.
Why me? Because I'm the environmental co-ordinator for Defence Construction Canada, I suppose.
I put on my heavy boots, brought long, heavy gloves, and drove there.
As I approached, I hoped I was seeing a squashed traffic pylon. No, the orange-red colour was the turtle's flesh and blood, exposed when most of its shell had been torn off.
I came closer. It was still alive but in the middle of the road. Vehicles were dodging around it.
I don't know turtle species. I do understand that snapping turtles, for example, are difficult to pick up safely. I also understand that stepping into traffic is risky for people as well as animals.
I paused. Traffic cleared. I picked up the poor beast from behind. It struggled. I placed it in the grass at the edge of the road.
I left it to die. To die at the edge of the road. At least, I hope it no longer has the strength to move back onto the road.
I returned to my office, called the City of Kingston main telephone line, and asked for the folks who deal with road kill. No one in the roads department answered, so the receptionist took my name and promised to get them to call me. That was half an hour ago. I've since washed the blood from my gloves. As I wetted the gloves, I could smell that characteristic fishy odour. Funny that I hadn't noticed it when I handled the animal.
I write this letter only to ask two rhetorical questions of everyone:
1. Why could no one have helped this turtle before it was hit?
2. How hard is it to pay attention to one's driving enough to avoid a 16-inch, slow-moving turtle in the middle of a summer's day? Or a cyclist? Or a child walking on the shoulder?
The city has just called back. A work order will be written up to remove the carcass.
I do hope they finish soon. I have to go back that way to get home. Bryon McConnell Kingston

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WHIG-STANDARD (Kingston, Ontario) 04 July 06 Letter: With drivers’ diligence, turtle deaths can be avoided
Re: Bryon McConnell’s “Don’t run over nature,” June 20.
Unfortunately, the tragic situation described by McConnell is quite normal in the Kingston area and has been for some time.
Greater Kingston is fortunate to be surrounded by, and in some cases visited by, harmless wildlife. Unfortunately, the area’s nest-seeking turtles don’t seem to recognize the value of the crosswalks that we have set up across the myriad of roads that now criss-cross the area between their feeding wetlands and the warmer, drier egg-laying areas higher up.
Most of the turtles crushed on area roads are females mothers-to-be looking for a place to spend an hour digging a nest and then filling it with anywhere from 12 to 30 or more eggs. Afterwards, it’s another crawl back across the hot asphalt to the relative safety of the pond or stream bank from where they came. The continuous vehicular attrition of these mothers-to-be has led to the significant collapse of turtle populations in some areas
I’m perplexed at how drivers moving at the city speed limit don’t manage to see five kilos of high-domed Blanding’s turtle on the road, and yet manage to manoeuvre in good time around a two-by-four board in the same place? Or worse, how they sometimes run over a turtle trying to nest in the warm gravel of the roadway shoulder?
A bit of turtle-like speed along the roads frequented by nesting critters will result in less road-kill carnage, and more turtles still being around for viewing by Kingston’s own human “hatchlings” years from now.
W. Bryon von Papineau
Turtle SHELL Tortue (Turtleshelltortue.org)
Ottawa Amphibian and Reptile Association

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