BOSTON GLOBE (Massachusetts) 31 October 13 Power line work makes concessions for Eastern box turtle (Michele Morgan Bolton)
Work underway to thin overgrowth along a 7-mile stretch of NStar transmission lines in Middleborough includes some special precautions for about four dozen of the town’s most vulnerable residents.
For the past five months, state officials, environmental advocates, and the utility company have staged a kind of “turtlepalooza” along Row 280, the utility’s 16.7-mile transmission line from Carver to Bridgewater.
There, in the middle of the line, in the heart of Middleborough — a town the utility doesn’t even serve – lies a large population of the Eastern box turtle, a species considered of “special concern” to the state.
Since May, at least 42 of the terrestrial creatures have been located along the line and fitted with micro transmitters so their movements can be monitored on demand as work progresses, said NStar spokesman Michael Durand.
Contractors will be taking down trees and cutting branches on the roughly 30-acre woodsy easement that backs up, in many cases, to private homes, according to Durand.
The vegetation-clearing effort is necessary to ensure reliable service, he said.
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