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NEW BRUNSWICK TELEGRAPH JOURNAL (Saint John, New Brunswick) 08 July 05 Turtle picks peculiar lie for nest; Expectant mother lays eggs in sandtrap at Rockwood Park Golf Course
No Talking is the unspoken rule at most golf courses, because nobody wants to be distracted from his or her swing.
But golfers at the Rockwood Park Golf Course have a special reason for library-like silence:
They don't want to disturb their turtle hatchery.
The hatchery was created early Friday afternoon when a turtle, presumably from Crescent Lake, wandered across the grass, dug a trench and laid its eggs in one of Rockwood's sand traps, oblivious to the dozens of duffers who politely played through.
The reptile was the same brownish colour as the rain-soaked sand, and Sue Titus - the first golfer to witness the spectacle - thought at first that she was looking at a rock.
"Until it moved," she added. "It was so cool," said Mary Craig, another member of the party. The others were Ellen Brennan and Margo MacDonald.
The expectant turtle had pushed up a wall of sand about six inches high, Ms. Craig said, illustrating this with the width of her hand. "And she was on her heinie, laying the eggs."
The four women could not actually see the eggs, which the animal eventually buried. This would have required lifting it from the trench, "and she wanted her privacy," Ms. Titus said.
"We watched her as long as we could, until another group came along, and we had to go," Ms. Craig said.
Fearing that marauders might come and dig up the eggs, the group and pro-shop manager Chris Ross asked the newspaper not to identify which sand trap contains them.
But it could be the one that's roped off and posted with a sign that says, "Please!!! Stay Out of the bunker. (TURTLE EGGS)."
A golfer who lands a ball here is expected to reach across the rope to pick up the ball, and play it from the opposite side of the trap, Mr. Ross said.
Gerry Connolly, golf course manager, said he intends to keep the trap cordoned off until the eggs hatch and the hatchlings are gone. But he has no idea how long that will take - something they don't teach in golf pro school.
"I'm an engineering tech as well, but they never taught it there either, not in civil engineering."
Jeff Houlahan, co-ordinator of environmental biology at the University of New Brunswick Saint John, said the turtle could be one of three species found in New Brunswick, and one of them is designated in this province as "a species of special concern."
It most likely was a snapping turtle, because Ms. Titus said it had a large head the size of her fist, he said. It probably wasn't a painted turtle, or the women would have notice some red colour. Neither of these two species is endangered.
But it might also have been a wood turtle, whose special-concern status could make the golf course responsible for its conservation. For example, Mr. Houlahan said CFB Gagetown is required to produce a management plan for the wood turtles living on this army base. "I don't know how this would work out for a golf course."
The eggs will hatch in 80 to 90 days, and it could be quicker if the weather is warm, he estimated. There will be no missing this when it happens, because golfers will find the sand dug up, and there will be egg shells.
"Wouldn't it be cool to be there when they start to come out," Ms. Craig said.

TELEGRAPH JOURNAL (Saint John, New Brunswick) 21 July 05 Rockwood's sandtrap turtles pique biologist's interest; UNBSJ graduate saw story on TV in Alberta (Mac Trueman)
That a turtle was seen laying its eggs in a golf course bunker did not amaze turtle expert Connie Browne.
But this UNBSJ graduate working toward her Ph.D. in biological sciences at University of Alberta was shocked nonetheless when she saw the news on her TV. Because this sand trap was at the Rockwood Park Golf Course.
"Snapping turtles love sand to nest in. But it surprised me that it was in Saint John, because there are hardly any records of turtles in Saint John."
Ms. Browne spoke from her field office at Lac La Biche, some 220 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, where she is working with very tiny radio-tracking collars to determine why two rare species of western Canadian toad are disappearing.
This Darlings Island native did two years of similar population surveys for her MSc. at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., examining the decline of seven turtle species at Point Pelee National Park on Lake Erie. She knows Rockwood Park intimately, after commuting through Foster Thurston Drive to UNBSJ for several years.
She was eating supper in front of her television when a news feature on the Rockwood turtle was flashed on Alberta TV. Her response was to write to golf course manager Gerry Connolly offering any help or advice he might need.
Jeff Houlahan, UNBJ's coordinator of environmental biology, has said the Rockwood turtle was most likely a snapping turtle. Of the nine known turtle species indigenous to Canada, only two are not considered endangered, and the snapper is one of them.
But Ms. Browne said that from her Point Pelee work it worries her that the snapping turtle may have fallen into trouble in some areas without anyone noticing.
Although the overall number of snapping turtles at Pelee has not diminished since the 1970s, Ms. Brown's surveys found very few young turtles. This makes her think that most turtle eggs are destroyed nowadays before they hatch. The effect hasn't worked its way through to the adult turtle population yet, because it takes 20 years for a snapping turtle to grow to adulthood.
The same phenomenon took the spotted turtle to extinction and the Blandings turtle to near-extinction at Pelee before anyone noticed, she said.
The Blandings that remain in Pelee are too old to reproduce, she said. Biologists call them "the living dead."
She believes raccoons are partly responsible. Their numbers are growing everywhere in Canada, because mankind has killed off the cougars, wolves and other predators that used to keep raccoons in check. And now man has stopped hunting and trapping raccoons.
She found that only 62 per cent of Blandings nests were destroyed in areas where farmers shoot raccoons, but it was 100 per cent the park itself, where hunting is not allowed.
Although Ms. Browne has developed and tested two designs of protective box that can keep raccoons and coyotes away from turtle nests, she doesn't think these are necessary at Rockwood.
"Usually, if something's going to eat them, it's in the first 24 hours, so they should be okay now."
Ms. Browne is not part of New Brunswick's brain drain of young people flocking to big job centre west of here and the United States.
She and her boyfriend - also from New Brunswick - intend to move back here in three years, when she completes her Ph.D. program, she said.
As far as jobs go, "I'm not going to be too picky, because I know it's hard to get work there," she said.
She added that, "there's actually a lot of people up here that miss New Brunswick like crazy. But they also like the money up here."