Reptile & Amphibian Forums

that one day people will be judged on their....oops, no wait, wrong speech, sorry! LOL!

I do have a dream though. Any constructive thoughts are welcome.

Background:

I live in the middle of a 5 acre woods. It adjoins other peoples 5 and 10 acre woods. The house are all around the woods, so the woods are "land locked" and not likely to be develped. I know it is good eastern boxie habitate as my kids used to find them now and again.

Proposal:

I would like to landscape my backyard to be very boxie friendly -lots of hiding places, bug friendly areas for hunting, grow plants that are attractive to boxies, watering places, etc. But I don't want any fences or barriers. The boxies that come to live or visit would do so voluntarily. They would be free to come and go and use the acres of woods that abut our property.

I would also like to find one or two female boxies (CB of course) for my guy. The babies would be released into the boxie friendly backyard.

(I have researched the laws here. I am allowed to keep adult eastern boxies, I am not allowed to keep hatchlings or eggs, or collect turtles from the wild, )

Well? (as I said, all constructive comments welcome, but no flaming please! Thanks!)
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0.1.0 ornate box turtle
1.0.0 eastern box turtle
1.0.0 Yellow belly slider
0.1.0 Red belly cooter
0.1.0 Australian shepard
1.11.0 chickens
1.0.0 Dutch(rabbit)
3.2.0 children (do I still count the married ones?)
1.0.0 husband

whaaa I don't know how to be helpful. We do see wild boxies around our place & I think it's because in the backlot we have never done anything to it. It's natural landscape.. last year we also had Mexican ground squirrels breeding out there. Those babies were adorable!!
We do have a mulberry tree that hangs over the fence.. the berries in spring attract more boxies to us.

That's how Hobo got here, he came here for years to get a meal & a drink of water.. I have the turtle water dish on the ground & I had no intentions of ever making him stay until that day he wound up in the mouth of a dog being held by the tail & beaten into the ground according the neighbor who witnessed it.
When she said the dog owner stood there & laughed at what his dog was doing, I just could allow Hobo to leave again.
Since we took him in I've seen other boxies outside the fence.. the food attracts them. That's the only way I know to attract them is for there to be food around.
I like your idea I hope you find a way to attract them so they can happily breed & create more boxies.
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PHRatz

Ratz nailed it...the way to a box turtle's heart is through the stomach! Food plots are probably your best bet for attraction. Fruit trees, strawberry patches, raspberry vines, blueberry bushes, zucchini, squash...anything easy, fruit dropping, or low growing. Try to let the areas around the food plots go as wild as possible.

Rouen's stream idea is also very good. Woodland box turtles typically find a water source and return to it time after time. They'll walk great distances during dry spells to get to this water source.

I did some work for an older couple when I was a teen in NJ. They lived on a small farm in the heart of the pines, and their yard was a virtual nature preserve. I would find tons of herps, and a box turtle here and there. One fall, I raked all of the leaves (there are actually lots of oak and sassafras in the pines) in the yard into one central pile and dumped it at the edge of the woods. Normally, the leaves were just raked haphazardly into the woods with no piling. In the spring, they asked me to distribute the "eye sore" a little more evenly. I found close to a dozen box turtles waking from hibernation. In short, piles of organic debris may attract turtles seeking overwintering sites.

It is not recommended to release turtles into an area unless those turtles (or their parents) came from that exact area. There's much debate about this, and releasing captives at all. In fact, it may even be illegal to do so. Unless your male and female came from this exact woods, I wouldn't release young into this population.

You have great vision for wanting to create a box turtle haven, and this is a great topic for discussion! Thanks for posting it.

What would the problems be, other than legal, of releasing hatchlings into the wild?
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0.1.0 ornate box turtle
1.0.0 eastern box turtle
1.0.0 Yellow belly slider
0.1.0 Red belly cooter
0.1.0 Australian shepard
1.11.0 chickens
1.0.0 Dutch(rabbit)
3.2.0 children (do I still count the married ones?)
1.0.0 husband

There are a myriad of potential problems, hence the illegality of releasing captive animals into a wild population. It rarely works as intended and the best case scenario usually results in all of the released individuals dying. Examples of worst case scenarios are plentiful and usually result in both the released individuals dying as well as the wild population being negatively affected. These threats range from the deleterious effects of foreign genes entering a population to pathogen transmission from captive to wild stock, etc. A little bit of population genetics knowledge is required to fully understand how a few rogue genes can quickly become fixed in a population, however, it's fairly easy to understand how wild individuals are susceptible to diseases that may be prevalent in the captive stock. Whether or not the effects are negative can vary; however, this anthropogenic threat should be avoided. The effects are often neutral or negative but rarely positive.
Bottom line is that the potential for harming natural populations is too great.
Cheers,
Ryan

But could it really harm the population if these turtles she wants to attract are actually turtles that live in the area already?
If they are there already, possibly breeding already then they just happen meet up at her house where she's prepared a gathering place just for them, would it really be that harmful?

I'm picturing turtle cocktail lounge for the locals.

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PHRatz

I think Ken and I are both referring to this part of the post:
"I would also like to find one or two female boxies (CB of course) for my guy. The babies would be released into the boxie friendly backyard."
Cheers,
Ryan

>>I think Ken and I are both referring to this part of the post:
>>"I would also like to find one or two female boxies (CB of course) for my guy. The babies would be released into the boxie friendly backyard."
>>Cheers,
>>Ryan

Oooohh ok I missed that.
Thanks for the further explanation.
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PHRatz

Ha, I missed it too at first. I had to go back and see what Ken was referring to.
Ryan

I'm not trying to argue here, just trying to understand.

I can see diseases being an issue if one is releasing an adult turtle that has been captive for awhile. But just hatched hatchlings? They couldn't spread infectious diseases could they?

As far as genetics, I'm talking native species here. Would some genetic diversity be a good thing?
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0.1.0 ornate box turtle
1.0.0 eastern box turtle
1.0.0 Yellow belly slider
0.1.0 Red belly cooter
0.1.0 Australian shepard
1.11.0 chickens
1.0.0 Dutch(rabbit)
3.2.0 children (do I still count the married ones?)
1.0.0 husband

You mentioned releasing offspring from CB turtles that you hope to acquire. Unless you will be acquiring turtles that were somehow bred in captivity, yet are also from your local population, then the offspring are not native (it's a native species to be sure, but we're talking about specimens).
Yes, genetic diversity within an existing population is good. However, these populations should be at Hardy-Weinberg equilibria if they are persisting indefinitely and a reservoir of variability is already being maintained. Introduction of even one foreign individual that is sexually recruited into the population may be enough to throw the whole system out of whack and cause fixation of other alleles (perhaps to the population's detriment). The point is that it is an anthropogenic disturbance that sometimes has a negative effect. Why introduce yet another potential threat?

Regarding disease transmission: since you have other turtles in captivity, the potential for foreign pathogen contamination is considerable. Eggs and embryos can be affected prior to hatching and hatchlings are extremely vulnerable (respiration, contact, etc.).
Again, the potential threat is there, so there are laws in place to prevent this.

logs! logs attract bugs and tend to grow mushrooms, and also provide a hiding spot.
I say go with native plants, non natives can take over rapidly.
for water, I'm not sure how effective they are but I've seen solar water filters/pumps that maybe you could use to make a small man made stream? just a thought.

You've had some good suggestions so far; a good way to attract wildlife would be to plant fruiting plants to provide a seasonal food source. Providing good cover and suitable nesting would be another way to attract a variety of creatures. Have you considered creating an *enhanced* ecotone long the edge of the woods? Typically, between woods and meadow (or lawn) there is a border zone of sorts, with vegetation that is neither of the woods or of the meadow. For example, it is not unusual to find blackberry (or other berry plant) patches along the edge of a wooded area. If you were to re-create this sort of 'fringe' habitat, you could probably attract alot of creatures.

If you want to contact me offlist, I can probably help you more. I'm a landscape designer, and this is the sort of project that I love to do...

I realise that you have checked on other aspects of what you would like to do: the only other advice I have is to make sure that it is legal to release CB hatchlings in your state...it is not legal in alot of places, so it might be a good idea to double check on that. If it turns out that you can't legally release hatchlings, you might want to think this over some more.

Cheers!

>>>> I'm a landscape designer, and this is the sort of project that I love to do...

Ok well that explains a lot LOL about why your pen looks so good, you're a pro!
I am so not good at that sort of thing.. when I start my pen planting if you don't mind I may be contacting you for help too.
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PHRatz

You know, I think my turtles have been some of my toughest clients yet...

They certainly forced me to interpret the very concept of landscape design from a completely different perspective.

>>You know, I think my turtles have been some of my toughest clients yet...
>>
>>They certainly forced me to interpret the very concept of landscape design from a completely different perspective.

Now that I do not doubt!
We have to make every thing so perfect for our charges, it can be difficult but when it's a labor of love it's just plain fun to do the work.
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PHRatz

THANK YOU Steff! That would be absolutley great!!
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0.1.0 ornate box turtle
1.0.0 eastern box turtle
1.0.0 Yellow belly slider
0.1.0 Red belly cooter
0.1.0 Australian shepard
1.11.0 chickens
1.0.0 Dutch(rabbit)
3.2.0 children (do I still count the married ones?)
1.0.0 husband