SUNDAY HERALD (Halifax, Nova Scotia) 15 August 10 Research helps baby turtles; Zoos aim to nurture Blanding's turtle in critical first years (Glen Parker)
Aylesford: An endangered turtle species in Nova Scotia is getting a new lease on life because of a special research program at Oaklawn Farm Zoo.
That's because the program is giving the Blanding's turtle a better shot at surviving the first two years of their lives. Those are the years they are most vulnerable to predators like raccoons, skunks, ravens, short-tailed shrews and ants that love to devour the eggs and hatchlings.
In its second year, the program got underway in June when volunteers followed turtles around in order to "see where they put their nests and lay their eggs," said Mike Brobbel, Oaklawn's reptile specialist.
The volunteers then gathered the eggs and brought them to the zoo in Aylesford where they were incubated and hatched under controlled conditions.
(Researchers have discovered that cool incubation temperatures produce males and warmer temperatures produce females.)
"We had 39 hatch" early Friday, Brobbell said in an interview. "And there are more on the way."
By the end of the day there were 60 new turtles.
After they hatched each baby turtle was weighed, measured, tagged and assigned a number.
Soon, the young Blanding's turtles will be sent to the Toronto Zoo. They will stay there for two years in order to mature. Then, they will be brought back to the area and released in the wild near the spot where their mother's nests were.
When the nurtured turtles are released they are much larger than their relatives who spent the first two years of their lives in the wild.
It would take five years for a Blanding's turtle in the wild to reach the size of the two-year-old turtles brought back from the Toronto Zoo, said Jeffie McNeil, Parks Canada's turtle program co-ordinator.
Because they are larger and their shells are harder, the nurtured turtles are less susceptible to the dangers presented by predators than their wild counterparts, she said.
When left to their own devices in the wild only about four per cent of Blanding's turtles survive to reach adulthood, McNeil said.
Researchers don't have figures on the numbers of nurtured ones that survive to adulthood, but researchers believe it should be a higher number because of their better ability to cope.
Researchers aren't able to say why the mortality rate is so high.
"Because the turtles live so long (some over 70 years), it is difficult to study changes in the population," McNeil explained. "The work we are doing now, we won't be able to follow up for 20 years."
Also involved in the project besides Parks Canada and the two zoos are Acadia University and the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources.
There are only about 350 adult Blanding's turtles left in Nova Scotia. There are three distinct populations in the province: one in Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site and two in the Medway River watershed.
Zoos aim to nurture Blanding's turtle in critical first years