Reptile & Amphibian Forums

last fall a box turtle showed up at the gate to my backyard. my husband placed him in my water turtles' outdoor enclosure to confine him untill i got home to show him to the kids. i told the kids he could 'stay' for a day or two, but he needed to get back to the wild where he belonged.

i don't know how he got across the roads, but i assumed he was heading for the small strip of woods across the street. (everything else is roads, sidewalks and yards around here)

anyway, i went to take him there, and he wasn't in the enclosure. i assumed he got out, and didn't think anything of it, until today when i found out that he went undergroung and hibernated in my turtles 'land area'.

will he be okay if i release him now? or should i just make him a suitable enclosure of his own? i don't want to release him if after being 'kept' for all this time he can't survive in the wild.

any info would be helpful. thanks, michele

Since he essentially went right into hibernation, there should not be any of the usual problems associated with releasing an animal that has been in captivity. Granted, there has been limited exposure to your captive turtles but releasing him now would effectively be the same as releasing him when you had originally intended to. My advice is to release the turtle immediately. The negative impacts of removing an adult turtle from the population far outweigh anything else.
Best of luck!

..

when i found him he was burried just under some mulch and loose dirt mabey a foot away from 'what i'm assuming was' his winter burrow. the hole was about his size, and went underground at about a 45 degree angle. do you think it's safe to move him away from the hole now, or should i wait until the weather warms up a little. /my turts are still inside, i was giving their pond a chance to warm up some before letting them out./
i'm located in southwestern pennsylvania, and we are still having some pretty cold mornings. we haven't seen snow for a couple weeks, but there is still frost. thanks for your quick reply, michele

That's a good question. If you're still seeing frost then I would say leave him be for a little while longer. That way he can go into the burrow if the temps get too low. When the temps are consistently above freezing and the turtle becomes increasingly more active then that would be a good time to release him.

thank you so much for your input. i will be taking a small group of cub scouts on a roadside clean-up project later this month. right along the strip of woods that i mentioned earlier. if all goes well, i can give them a talk about conservation. then we can hike into the woods and they can help me find a good place for his/her new home.

I grew up not very far from Philly. My box turtles kept in an outdoor pen were out, about, and eating by the end of April every year. I think that's a pretty safe bet.