TO ALL BLANDING'S TURTLE ENTHUSIASTS

MidWest PARC recently held their annual meeting which included two days of talks and discussion regarding Blanding's Turtle research and conservation. The meeting concluded with the general agreement that Blanding's turtles are special critters that could and should be the flagship species of wetland conservation.


We (MWPARC Blanding's Turtle Core Area Task Force) are seeking people who have radio-telemetry data on movements of adult, juvenile, or hatching Blanding's Turtles.

Please forward this email to anyone you know that radio-tracks Blanding's Turtles or continue reading this email if that person is you.

One way to highlight the unusual (if not unique) combination of Blanding's Turtle spatial biology and life-history traits and the conservation issues they raise, is to produce a synthesis of the existing data on home range size, movements of adult females and males, and habitat use of adults and juveniles. The synthesis would be made into a manager/conservationist friendly format by MidWest PARC to make presentations about the need for protection of both the wetland and terrestrial components of Blanding's Turtle core areas. Depending on the quantity and quality of data compiled, the following could result: 1) a PARC document aimed at conservation and management of Blanding's Turtle, or 2) a multi-authored paper for publication.

We think that a synthesis is possible given the large number of people and agencies dedicated to and collecting data on Blanding's Turtles. Therefore, the Blanding's Turtle Core Area Task Force was created to explore whether enough people are willing to cooperate by providing relevant data from unpublished theses, grey literature, and reports.

If you have radio-telemetry data on Blanding's Turtles and might be interested in contributing to this project, please email Tracy Rittenhouse

trittenhouse@wisc.edu for  more details.


The MWPARC Blanding's Turtle Core Area Task Force:

Justin Congdon, Emeritus Professor, Savannah River Ecology Lab- University of Georgia
Jennifer Anderson-Cruz, Biologist, USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Services Iowa
Jamie Forberg, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum Illinois
Jeff LeClere, Zoologist, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Michael Pappas, Restaurant Owner and Independent Researcher Minnesota
Tracy Rittenhouse, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Wisconsin
Daniel Thompson, Ecologist, DuPage County Forest Preserve District Illinois
Celeste Troon, Director of Living Collections, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum Illinois

 
From: Herp Digest
Volume # 10 Issue # 54 12/16/10