By Darlena Cunha, Florida, Gainesville Sun, Correspondent
Published: Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 12:38 p.m.
In
the spring and fall of each year, dozens of tiny turtles scramble
through grass, around oaks and under fences in the Gainesville area,
trying desperately to get to a waterway. Often, their path intersects
with a street and cars slow down or move around them.
Sometimes, they are crushed into the asphalt.
Getting
past the juvenile stage as a turtle is tough around here, but if they
do, the creatures can have a lifespan of 30 years or more, according to
Dr. Ken Dodd, courtesy associate professor of the Department of Wildlife
Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida.
But even adult turtles must survive a plethora of dangers to make it through each day.
“They’ve
got a lot of things going against them. A lot of the babies are hit by
cars, and the nests taken by predators,” said George Heinrich, a
wildlife biologist, environmental educator and founder of Heinrich
Ecological Services.
Add to that human development and trapping, and conservationists say the outlook of turtle survival becomes grimmer.
Jerry
Johnston, a professor of biology at Santa Fe College, spends his days
monitoring the turtle populations in the Santa Fe River and the springs,
where they play an important ecological role. The Suwannee cooter, for
example, eats the invasive plant species hydrilla, which (along with
algae) becomes abundant when nitrate levels in the water increase and
effectively ruins the springs as we know them today.
But turtles’ value extends beyond those specific waterways.
“Turtles
play an important role in Gainesville’s food webs,” Johnston said.
“Some species, like snapping turtles, are scavengers. They are the
unsung heroes of populations, going around and keeping things clean.
Other species are very important in seed dispersals to help create
healthy plant populations.”
Gainesville
has 13 native turtle species, according to Johnston. Within Alachua
County, there are 15 different native turtle species, and all of them
are helping to keep ecosystems in check by eating and being eaten, or
simply by building their own homes.
“The
gopher tortoises dig burrows for themselves, but when they move on,
those tunnels provide homes for hundreds of other animal species,”
Johnston explained.
Those burrows, however, face grave danger in the form of human construction and development.
“Developers
want to build on high, dry ground, and that’s where the tortoises
live,” said Heinrich. “These days, if you want to develop on a hatching
ground, you have to relocate the turtles. You can’t just build over
them. We used to allow people to just bury them alive.”
Heinrich
said that while there are certain protections in place now for the
turtles, many people ignore them. “Right now, there are fines if you do
build on top of turtles, but the laws have to be enforced, and there has
to be concrete evidence that it happened,” he said. “By the time the
paperwork catches up, the turtles are gone.”
The
scientists said residents trapping turtles is another large threat to
the population. Whether turtles are getting caught in crab traps
unintentionally or being purposefully hunted for food, many river
turtles never make it out alive. And when they’re on land, it can be
even worse.
“One
of the major hazards for turtles is all these roads we have around
here,” Johnston said. “Someone could pick up a turtle and take it home
as a pet, or it gets run over.”
The
scientists agree that if you see a turtle trying to cross the street,
you should help it across, but only move it in the direction it was
already going. Heinrich says many people make the mistake of taking a
turtle and tossing it in the nearest pond, where it may or may not
belong.
“Don’t try to think for the turtle,” Johnston said. “It knows what it’s doing.”
Dodd
warned not to hold turtles too close to their heads or you could get
bitten, and said always use extreme caution when moving them through
traffic, as there have been human fatalities on the roads when
do-gooders attempt to save turtles. Johnston also emphasized that there
are multiple ways to help our important turtle population.
“Never
take turtles home as pets. If you’re in a boat on a lake or a river,
drive slowly. Don’t hit the turtles with your boat. It sounds like
common sense, but I’ve seen hundreds of turtles horribly damaged by
boats driving too fast.
“Don’t
eat turtles. It is illegal to eat turtles. As much as possible, leave
the turtles alone; they will figure out what to do. There are springs on
the Santa Fe River that serve as nurseries for the turtles, so do
whatever you can to preserve the springs.”
Johnston said his mission is to figure out how our turtles survive in a human-dominated landscape.
“Some
do well, others not so much, but most people never give the turtles a
second thought,” he said. “We’ve got something really special here that a
lot of people take for granted.”
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