Neighbor helps turtle research group recover two stolen ATVs
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Volunteers operating a turtle research group on a shoestring budget were devastated when someone stole two new all-terrain vehicles Friday night.
They were equally elated when an observant neighbor cruising around on his golf cart spotted them the next day less than a half-mile away. “I was ecstatic. I honestly didn’t believe we were going to get them back,” Florida Leatherbacks President Kelly Martin said.
When police called and said they found the ATVs, she ran out of her house to meet with the police officer and retrieve the indispensable equipment, she said.
Florida Leatherbacks usually keeps the ATVs at the beach, but Martin brought them to her house near Palm Beach Gardens High School for safekeeping during Hurricane Irma. When she let her dogs out Saturday morning, she noticed the gate to her backyard was open and the ATVs gone.
“It was very shocking and very unnerving,” Martin said.
She put out a blast on social media begging for help finding them. The group’s researchers rely on the Honda ATVs to look for the critically endangered turtles nesting on 25 miles of Martin County beaches from midMarch to the end of June.
Martin’s public pleas worked. A keen-eyed neighbor who saw Martin’s post on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor spotted the ATVs while cruising around on his golf cart Saturday morning. The thieves had stashed the ATVs — still chained together — behind the church on the same street as Martin’s house.
Someone tried and failed to hot-wire one of them. Martin suspects the thieves ran out of time and planned to return Saturday night to finish the job. Other than the hot-wiring attempt, there was no major damage, she said.
Florida Leatherbacks bought the ATVs with money from the Jenny Albert Sea Turtle Foundation and the Turtleman Foundation. Each costs about $4,700. One had been used for one season, and the other had only a few hours of use, Martin said.
Leatherbacks, which can weigh 500 to 2,000 pounds, are the least common species of turtle to nest on Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast beaches. They didn’t nest here historically and have a genetic structure similar to turtles in the Caribbean, Martin said.
Volunteers patrolling the Martin County coastline every night encountered them 160 times this season, a low from 400 or 500 in a good year, Martin said. She and colleague Chris Johnson started tagging leatherbacks in Palm Beach County in 2001 and formed the nonprofit in 2014 to research the Martin County population.
Their team of interns and volunteers identifies how many leatherbacks there are and how often they’re nesting. The volunteers also take genetic samples and attach satellite transmitters to see where the turtles go when they leave Martin County. Moana, for example, was about 40 miles from Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Sept. 22.
As for the ATV theft, there are no suspects, and police didn’t find any surveillance cameras among Martin’s neighbors to aid them, according to a Palm Beach Gardens police report.
Florida Leatherbacks didn’t have trackers on the ATVs, but they’re looking into it, Martin said. They can’t insure the ATVs because of the way they’re used and stored, she said.