A freshwater turtle may move slowly, but the risk of extinction for 7 out of 8 of Canada’s species is coming up fast.

        Freshwater turtles spend the winter hibernating at the bottom of lakes, and when summer arrives, they emerge from their submerged slumber and search for mates. Out in the open, turtles face many dangers. The Ottawa Turtle Conservation Centre (OTCC), who runs a hotline that allows people to call in about turtles who may be in danger, received 10,000 calls last year.

        Turtles are particularly prone to being hit by cars. 247 freshwater turtles died in Muskoka in 2017, and 548 died in the Ottawa area. This occurs for a number of reasons. Turtles are slow, and cannot avoid oncoming traffic, but often are forced to cross roads despite the dangers to reach their breeding grounds. Female freshwater turtles are known to lay their eggs in the soft gravel often found in the hard-shoulders of more rural roads.

They have suffered massive habitat loss because they tend to favour the warmer and wetter regions closer to the USA border, which are some of the most urbanized areas of Canada. This leads to freshwater turtles trying to cross some of the busiest roads in Canada, which inevitably increases the frequency of roadside mortality and decreasing the safe spaces they have to settle.

        If they do manage to safely mate and lay eggs, freshwater turtles’ nests are a favourite target for raccoons, coyotes and some rats, all animals who are common in urban environments, who eat the eggs and defenceless hatchlings.

“[T]ypically one egg in a hundred – or even a thousand, wins the lottery and becomes an adult.” – David Seburn, freshwater turtle specialist at CWF

Sometimes, the best opportunity at a long life is to be raised in captivity. The Toronto Zoo has a Blanding Turtle breeding program, one of Canada’s freshwater species who are most at risk, where they recover eggs from nests who are in trouble in the wild. These turtles are raised in captivity for around two years, and 50 are released each year into Rouge River. Andrew Lentini, curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Toronto Zoo said a stable population will be achieved in 17-20 years. A similar program run by Wildlife Preservation Canada in Fraser Valley, British Columbia, raises 175-200 turtles annually.

For turtles who are already in the wild, the work of groups like Saving Turtles at Risk Today (START) in the Muskoka-Haliburton area work in tandem with Scales Nature Park to help protect turtle nests. Residents and visitors to the park are urged to call a hotline, and then volunteers and staff are sent out to newly discovered nests, which are then covered with wooden frame cages and wire, which protects the nests from predation, allowing the eggs to hatch.

These programs are all providing a chance for freshwater turtles to survive, but this is fuelled by the contributions of thousands of volunteers. The Kejimkujik National Park program, started by Norman Sherman, professor emeritus at Acadia University said the recovery program he runs is “driven by students and citizens.”

“In the past 12 years, they’ve tallied 100,000 hours. » – Norman Sherman on voluteer freshwater turtle rescue programs

This kind of dedication is something that will have to continue if the intensive process of protecting Canada’s freshwater turtles is to continue.

Read more about the research and conservation that is ongoing to help protect Canada’s freshwater turtles in the latest issue of Canadian Wildlife magazine, May + June 2018 edition.

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