Endangered turtle making a slow and steady comeback in Lake County, ILL. – via Herp Digest

Here is an older Blanding's turtle that was recaptured, and to the left, you can see part of the transmitter used to track the turtle as part of a program with the Lake County Forest Preserves. (Lake County Forest Preserves)

Frank Abderholden, Chicago Sun-Times October, 27, 2017

Known to some as the smiling turtle, the Blanding's turtle actually has something to smile about because of the success of a seven-year effort by the Lake County Forest Preserves to support the reptile, which was declared endangered by the state in 2009. 

"I'm really excited about the point we are at," said Gary Glowacki, wildlife biologist for the Lake County Forest Preserves.

Local preservationists are very close to having a viable population that can reproduce on its own along the northern Lake Michigan shoreline area in Lake County on the border with Wisconsin, where thousands of acres between state and county preserves afford the turtle a place to thrive and room to roam.

"The bigger the area, the better," Glowacki said, since the turtle prefers to reside in mats of cattails and wetland until it is ready travel to a dry upland area to dig a hole and lay its eggs. Sometimes, the turtles cross the road to find a good nesting site, and roadkill takes its toll on turtles in general.

Illinois has 17 species of turtles, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). The Blanding turtle's range includes Canada south to into New England and west through the Great Lakes to Nebraska, Iowa and extreme northeastern Missouri, according to the forest preserve.

Before the area became farmland, the Blanding's turtle — named for American naturalist Dr. William Blanding — was probably common in the county, but the Chiwaukee Illinois Beach Lake Plain between Waukegan and southeast Wisconsin is the only area expansive enough for a large population to become viable.

Along with the IDNR, Lake County officials have been teaming with the McHenry County Conservation District, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy and the Illinois Nature Preserve Commission on the turtle project.

"We've been working on it for seven years, and survival rates are increasing. The next step is some of the turtles we put out will hit the reproductive stage," said Glowacki after recently picking up a batch of small turtles from McHenry, where they were incubated.

"We bring them back and put them in tubs and grow them so they have a better chance of surviving," he said. Predators like raccoons are trapped to reduce predation, though crows, chipmunks, foxes and skunks are also a threat.

The young turtles come in about the size of a quarter and leave when they're more the size of a cookie, three to six inches across. The restoration program has been supplementing the local population with about 100 turtles a year, although last year the number hit 178.

"We over-shot it a little bit," Glowacki said with a laugh.

This is one of the baby Blanding’s turtles that will over winter in a tub at a Lake County Forest Preserves facility. It's one of 112 baby turtles that will be released next year. (Lake County Forest Preserves)

The turtles are fed a kind of turtle Jell-O that has all the required nutrients. Later, they get time outdoors in pens where they will eat their natural prey, such as earthworms, small fish and crayfish, before being released to fend for themselves. They can live up to 80 years, and an adult sized turtle is the size of a helmet.

"Anything they can get their mouth on, they'll eat," Glowacki said. When staffers live-trap the turtles to count them and take blood and saliva or attach a transmitter, they put a sardine in the trap.

"They go after that," Glowacki said, "but when a crayfish is in the trap, attracted to the bait, a turtle will soon follow."

This year, the program received help from two interns from The Wildlife Epidemiology Lab within the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois. Their blog about taking blood samples and saliva swabs, among other things, is at http://vetmed.illinois.edu/wel/author/laurenjohn/.

Glowacki said their quest for a viable population is closer than ever.

"Modeling supports that were not quite viable, but very very close," he said, noting the program has the largest population of Blanding's in the state. "It's not quite viable, but we are definitely headed in the right direction.”

The program is funded through the Preservation 

Foundation of the Lake County Forest Preserve, which has an Adopt a Turtle program where donors can name a turtle and get a behind-the-scenes tour for a $120 donation. Last year, the program exceeded its $12,000 goal. This year, the amount was about half that in mid-October, but officials said there was a big push in 2016.

Richard (Dick) Reilly, 70, who moved to Volo recently from Wauconda, has been a turtle champion to three specimens so far — Slick, Turbo and Bucky, as in the University of Wisconsin's Bucky Badger mascot. He first saw something about the program in the preserve's newsletter.

"It just clicked right away for me," he said. "We grew up being instilled as nature lovers by my parents. (We) had a lot of turtles and frogs around outside, and we learned to like them at a very early age.”

Reilly added that participating in the conservation effort "was a way to try and help turn things around. I'm all in."

Information on the Adopt-A-Turtle program can be found at the district's headquarters in Libertyville and online at https://www.lcfpd.org/preservation-foundation/adopt-a-turtle/. Donations are being taken to be a turtle champion and be part of the tour in November.

"There's still a month left," Glowaski said in mid-October. "Hopefully, we can make (the fund-raising goal) in the end."

Turtle’s appearance in Nebraska Panhandle leaves experts scratching their heads - via Herp Digest

By David Hendee / World-Herald staff writer

GERING, Neb. Jun 23, 2017 The discovery in Scotts Bluff County of a species of turtle whose western range was thought to be limited to the Nebraska Sand Hills has the state’s turtle world a bit abuzz.

Dr. Dennis Ferraro, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln specialist in the world’s amphibians, turtles and reptiles, plans to travel to Gering sometime next week to take samples of the turtle’s toenails for testing to determine the region where it has been living during the last year or two.

The clippings will be analyzed for their stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, which will help Ferraro match the turtle to bodies of water where it had been living and feeding. Rainwater has different chemical characteristics across Nebraska.

“This will help us learn if the turtle was transported to Scotts Bluff County or slowly moved away and has been living there,’’ Ferraro said.

Blanding’s turtles are found in Keith County, at least 100 miles down the North Platte River from where it was found in Scotts Bluff County. It would be the first of its species known to exist in the state’s Panhandle, Ferraro said.

“It’s three counties west of where it’s been found before,’’ he said.

The mature Blanding’s turtle was found by Patrick Closson of Gering and his son Max, 17, alongside Nebraska Highway 26 between Scottsbluff and Mitchell last week. The area is near irrigation canals and the North Platte River.

The Clossons stopped and picked up the turtle to prevent it from becoming roadkill and took it home.

Mary Ann Closson, who is accustomed to her husband and sons showing up with critters they find on fishing trips or other outings — she once hosted a large snapping turtle in the bottom of a 55-gallon barrel — said she had never seen a turtle like the hitchhiker that appeared at her door.

The turtle’s shell is a high dome surrounded by yellow spots.

“This turtle isn’t from here,’’ Closson said.

She took to the Internet and identified her guest as a Blanding’s turtle, and she learned that it is considered endangered throughout much of its range east and west of the Great Lakes and in Canada. It is common to abundant in the Sand Hills but still listed as a Tier 1 species, meaning it has the highest state protection.

Closson contacted Amanda Filipi, an outdoor education specialist at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission’s Wildcat Hills Nature Center south of Gering. Filipi took in the turtle Monday and contacted her former mentor, Ferraro.

Filipi said the turtle appears to be always smiling. She introduced the turtle to Nebraska Game and Parks commissioners meeting in Gering and at the nature center this week.

Ferraro said it would be a big deal if studies show that the species’ range is moving west.

“If it’s just one that wanders, it doesn’t tell us much,’’ he said.

Ferraro said if the laboratory analysis indicates the turtle has been in Scotts Bluff County for a long time, researchers would scour the county’s wetlands for others.

“If we can find out where it’s from, we’ll get it back there,’’ he said.

Otherwise, the turtle could become an animal ambassador at the Wildcat Hills Nature Center.

Ferraro said it’s a “too common’’ occurrence to hear reports of people picking up a turtle from Nebraska Highway 2 in the Sand Hills and taking it home to their yard somewhere far away, only to have it wander off to be “discovered’’ by someone who contacts him.

“If that’s what happened here, it’s not a big deal,’’ he said. “It’s a mystery.’’

Blanding’s turtle protected as turbine approval revoked-The wind turbine project in Prince Edward County would have threatened the endangered Blanding's turtle. – via Herp Digest

By Jim Coyle, Insight Tues., June 7, 2016

The Blanding’s turtle, a sunny little reptile already prone to smiling, must be beaming this week like somebody who’d won a lottery the same day they were awarded the Nobel Prize.

For the third time in the past three years, a legal decision was handed down in favour of the endangered species, and against a proposed wind turbine development in Prince Edward County, east of Toronto, that threatened to cause the turtle “serious and irreversible harm.”

In a ruling released Monday, an Environmental Review Tribunal ordered the initial “renewable energy approval” issued by the Ontario Environment Ministry four years ago to Ostrander Point GP Inc. revoked.

As far as opponents of the development are concerned, their fight is as good as won.

“Yippee! Hooray!” said Cheryl Anderson, a member and past president of the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists. “It’s been a long haul.”

The tribunal found, she said, that “none of the remedies that were proposed will do what needs to be done to make that a safe place for the Blanding’s turtle.

“I think it probably is the end of the road for this (development),” she said.

Dan Hardie, interim president of Gilead Power Corp., parent of Ostrander Point GP, said “we’re very disappointed.”

 He told the Star he was to meet with his board and consultants Tuesday “to see where we’re going to go from here” and expected to have more to say later in the week.

In essence, the tribunal ruled that whatever the benefits of renewable energy — and whatever a government’s policy interest in promoting it — they do not override the public interest in protecting against environmental harm. (Migratory birds, bats and monarch butterflies were also said to be at risk under the wind turbine proposal.)

In December 2012, the provincial approval was awarded to Ostrander to install nine wind-turbine generators and supporting facilities on Crown land at Ostrander Point.

That decision was appealed to the Environmental Review Tribunal, which in July 2013 found the project posed serious and irreversible harm to the Blanding’s turtle, a species that is globally endangered and threatened in Ontario.

The developer appealed that finding to Ontario Divisional Court, then to the province’s Court of Appeal.

In April 2015, the Appeal Court upheld the tribunal’s finding on the potential environmental harm, but said the panel had failed to allow Ostrander to propose a remedy.

After hearings held last fall and earlier this year, the tribunal concluded that the proposed remedies were insufficient to safeguard the turtle and that, in effect, there were no known remedies available.

The Blanding’s turtle, named after the Philadelphia naturalist who identified it in the 1800s, averages 1.3 kilograms in weight, is 18 to 25 centimetres long and can have a lifespan of up to 70 years.

“It’s such a beautiful turtle, you know, with its bright yellow throat,” said Anderson. “It’s so distinctive and so beautiful and so rare.”

And now, it would appear, so much safer.

Oldest well-documented Blanding's Turtle recaptured at reserve at age 83

Date: May 25, 2016

Source: University of Michigan

A female Blanding's turtle believed to be at least 83 years old was captured at a University of Michigan forest reserve this week. Researchers say it is the oldest well-documented Blanding's turtle and one of the oldest-known freshwater turtles.

The turtle was captured Monday at U-M's Edwin S. George Reserve, about 25 miles northwest of Ann Arbor in southwestern Livingston County, near Pinckney. This individual, known as 3R11L, was first captured and marked in 1954, one year after the start of the reserve's long-running turtle study. It has been recaptured more than 50 times since then.

Blanding's turtles reach sexual maturity at around age 20. Since 3R11L was sexually mature when first captured in 1954, she is believed to be at least 83 years old, according to turtle researcher Justin Congdon, who began studying the E.S. George turtles in the mid-1970s.

"There was a lot of excitement and a lot of high-fives when we caught it, and we celebrated with a bottle of Cabernet," said Congdon, a professor emeritus at the University of Georgia who studied the E.S. George turtles every nesting season from 1975 through 2007. He came out of retirement to return to the reserve this month.

"We knew that we were down to fewer than 15 of the turtles that were marked in the 1950s," he said. "We figured we still had a chance to catch one, and it has been one of our goals to do so."

The previous longevity record for a Blanding's turtle was a 76-year-old individual from Minnesota, he said. Other types of turtles, including box turtles, wood turtles and sea turtles -- as well as tortoises -- are thought to live longer.

"This is just one example that shows the importance of our multigenerational investment in the biological sciences," said Andrew Martin, dean of the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

"If we hadn't continued this work over the decades, we would have no idea how long-lived these turtles are or how they respond to ecological changes," said U-M biologist Christopher Dick, director of the E.S. George Reserve.

Continued … 

NOT EVERYONE LIKES TURTLES? Op-Ed- This is how the City of Ottawa is spending $700G of your money Fence put up along along Dwyer Hill Rd. to protect endangered species - via Herp Digest

By Susan Sherring, Ottawa Sun- Wednesday, December 09, 2015 11:12 AM EST

Hail the hallowed turtle.

In an effort to protect the Blanding's turtle, the city spent $700,000 erecting a turtle fence on Dwyer Hill Rd.

And city staff believe many more hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent doing the same across the city -- all at taxpayers' expense -- to protect endangered species.

West Carleton-March Coun. Eli El-Chantiry said the expense of the fence in his ward means fewer dollars for fixing potholes and erecting traffic signals.

(The city's corporate communications department put the cost of the fence at $480,000, but as El-Chantiry rightly points out, that's just for the physical aspect of the structure and doesn't include the work needed before construction.)

The fences are mandated by the province under the Endangered Species Act.

Good to know that in a city where we don't have enough affordable housing for the most vulnerable, that our turtles are being protected.

According to city staff, the affected portion of the road, which is near the intersecton with Dwyer Hill Rd. passes through a wetland provincially identified as a habitat for the Blanding's turtle.

Who knew the Blanding's turtle is a provincially and nationally threatened species? The primary threat to Blanding's turtle is road mortality. The fencing and wildlife passages are intended to eliminate that threat at this location.

And if mandating a turtle fence isn't bad enough, read about and weep for the requirements for the fence. Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry guidelines call for fencing to be buried approximately 10 to 20 centimetres below ground and 40 cm above ground and include overhangs or extended lips. Long-term or permanent fencing projects require durable materials such as heavy-duty geotextile, wood, concrete, woven-wire, sheet metal, vinyl panels or galvanized mesh.

So clearly, the $700,000 fence is just the tip of the iceberg hoisted on the lowly taxpayer. Imagine the costs for a room full of provincial bureaucrats sitting in a room with a view, spending hours coming up with those requirements, taking time out to order lunch on our dime of course! Painful.

"I thought it was very costly," El-Chantiry told the Sun on Tuesday. "And we can't do anything about it. People want to know what's more important, spending $700.000 on fixing roads and potholes or a turtle fence. There's a lot of bad feelings."

That's an understatement.

What's the city to do? Frustration clearly reigns.

Worse yet, not everyone is convinced the turtle fence is the most efficient or effective way to go.

There have been documented cases of turtles getting caught in the fence -- and dying. And even the most diehard of environmentalists have to wonder if the costs couldn't be better managed.

Frightening isn't it?

And yes, it's only going to get worse.

"Although the new provincial Endangered Species Act came into effect in 2008, habitat protection for most of the listed endangered and threatened species only took effect in 2013," the city states.

"The City of Ottawa includes extensive areas of habitat for endangered and threatened species, in both urban and rural settings. Therefore, in cases where our roads and other infrastructure cross through this habitat, we must now ensure that our construction and maintenance projects are carried out in compliance with the act. The list of species protected under the act also continues to change over time, with new endangered and threatened species being added periodically."

Speaking of endangered species, we should probably include the disappearing common sense politician on that list.

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