More Blanding’s Turtle researchers hit the jackpot with new discovery
Turtle researchers in southwest Nova Scotia have hit the jackpot.
After decades of searching the woods and waterways, volunteers with the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute (MTRI) have found a fourth pocket of Blanding’s turtles in Nova Scotia.
“I might have danced around the room,” says biologist Jeffie McNeil. “We had a very credible sighting report and then we were able to follow up on that and found so many turtles – we have a lot of questions and we’re really just starting.”
Blanding’s turtles are endangered in Nova Scotia and before this discovery researchers knew of three populations totalling maybe 350 adults.
It was a trout fisherman who called MTRI last fall to say he’d seen Blanding’s turtles and ribbon snakes in another spot.
Both reptiles are species at risk in Nova Scotia and both are ‘disjunct’ populations, meaning cut off and isolated from the main populations in other parts of North America.
McNeil went out last fall to do visual surveys even though
turtles slow down and become harder to find.
She couldn’t find any turtles but she did find one ribbon snake.
This spring a team of volunteers from MTRI started looking again in earnest.
“It’s easier in the spring before the vegetation and leaves comes out,” says Harold Clapp of Smith’s Cove, who along with his wife Diane have been looking for Blanding’s turtles since 2006.
The couple have done visual surveys and set out sardineladen
traps on 24 different water bodies all across southwestern Nova Scotia – and still, in 10 years of constant searching, they only managed to find a few scattered turtles.
They headed into the woods in April this year with volunteers and summer students from MTRI to check out the new lead – turtles leave their overwintering spots in the spring and start moving around and will often climb up to a sunny spot on warm afternoons.
The first couple of weeks of searching turned up nothing.
“I was starting to wonder if this was going to be like all those other places we looked, like all those other tips we followed up,” said Harold.
And then one day they found one. The next day they found four.
“Finding even one new turtle is a big deal, we’ve done a lot of looking and it doesn’t happen very often,” said Harold. “For a while we were finding a new one every day or so, it was very exciting.”
Researchers notch the shells of every turtle they find to identify them. The finder also gets the honour of naming the turtle.
Researchers attach radio transmitters to the turtles’ shells so they can track the habitat the turtles move in and out of.
And by following the turtles, the researchers find more turtles.
By the end of June, the researchers had counted 31 turtles in this new population.
“It’s going to take a while to figure out how big the population is and what habitats they are using,” said Clapp. “We’re still learning about the other populations and we’re only just starting with this one.”