A Little Help For Turtles
Crossing Our Roadways
“June is a dangerous month for turtles.
It’s then that the females hit the road-
figuratively & literally. They leave the relative safety of their wetlands
habitats, including rivers, lakes, & ponds, to search out a spot to lay
their eggs. You might see them on sand or gravel road shoulders- & that’s a
behavior that puts them at risk for being struck by passing vehicles, said
Caroline Gagne, a biologist with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC).
Quebec has 8 native species of turtle: The
Blanding turtle, map turtle, musk turtle, painted turtle, snapping turtle,
spiny softshell turtle, & wood turtle. To help reduce their mortality rate
on the roads, the NCC developed a website for reporting turtle sightings,
carapace.ca.
In 2017, the project’s first year, 500
people reported 856 turtles belonging to 5 native species as well as a couple
of exotic species…Nearly half were in the Monteregie & Outaouais regions,
said Gagne, the Carapace project’s co-ordinator, with the Laurentians &
Eastern Townships next in line…
The website asks anyone who spots turtles to
photograph them & note their location on a short form.
…A platform such as carapace.ca encourages
citizen science; it makes it possible, she explained, to cover a large
territory without specialists or material.
The site also describes how to help a turtle
spotted on a road by guiding it to safety: it’s important not to change the
direction in which the turtle is facing, Gagne explained. If the turtle is big
or seems aggressive-…then it’s best to urge the turtle into a pail or onto a
car mat that is then dragged across the road she said…
Turtles take a long time to reproduce, with
some species mating only after 25 years. The number of eggs laid varies from
one species to another, from a handful to a couple dozen…
The
NCC, a not-for-profit private land conservation organization, works to protect
natural areas & the species they sustain.
Since 1962, the NCC & its partners have helped
protect more than 1.1 million hectares (2.8
million acres) across Canada, including
45,000 hectares (111,197 acres) in Quebec.”
Susan Schwartz
The Montreal Gazette
June 2/2018
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