An ode to tortoise poop
Posted onJuly 28, 2025byMariel Terebiznik|Canada's New Noahs, Conservation Success, News and EventsPhoto: M. Terebiznik
Since 1988, the Canada’s New Noah program has provided young conservation biologists in Canada the opportunity of a lifetime. Each year, WPC selects a dedicated biologist from applicants across Canada to undertake a 3-month course at the Durrell Conservation Academy in the U.K. followed by a 6-month internship on the islands of Mauritius and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. This is an opportunity unlike any other for young Canadians to learn firsthand how the world’s most successful conservation recovery programs are managed and to bring this knowledge and experience back to improve Canada’s conservation capacity. Mariel Terebiznik is WPC’s 34th Canada’s New Noah and reports on her experiences and how she will apply them on return to Canada. The Canada’s New Noah Program is generously supported by the Alan & Patricia Koval Foundation.
As I landed in Mauritius, ready to embark on what would be 6 months of field work, I had some semblance of what to expect. I chatted with previous New Noahs, researched the work Mauritian Wildlife Foundation does, and met some Mauritian friends at the DESMAN course. They all referenced breath-taking beaches, engaging field work, and being a part of a community of passionate conservationists. But what I was most excited about was the chance to work with giant Aldabra tortoises. I have always had a soft spot for turtles – they were the focus of my first field work as I paddled around Algonquin Park looking for Snapping and Painted turtles, they drove my research questions in my undergraduate and Master’s degrees, and they are incredibly adorable and fun to work with. Needless to say, I was ready for these gorgeous gentle giant Aldabras to be the centre of my latest obsession. What I did not expect was for that obsession to centre around their poop.
Before you judge, let me explain. I have spent the first 2 months in Mauritius working on the beautiful island of Iles aux Aigrettes (IAA). On IAA, part of my job includes taking care of the young Aldabra tortoises by collecting leaves to feed them, changing their water, and of course cleaning up their poop. The island itself is populated by a bunch of free-roaming adult tortoises that we also check in on. One of the best parts of being on IAA is sharing it with these tortoises. Back in Canada, when I am in the field, I am used to the rustling of leaves in the distance to mean a bear or moose is close by. On IAA, it is always a tortoise. They lumber around the island popping in and out of our work like a rotating cast of supporting staff. The tortoises cheer us up with their antics, mimic our field work in their own daily quest for leaves, and ask for a good neck scratch when the mood strikes them. This means that on IAA, every path I take, every step I make, I see tortoise poop.
Having to clean up and watch my step for tortoise poop on a daily basis, one might think that it would become a nuisance. Instead, tortoise poop has become my beacon of joy.
Aldabra tortoise poop surprisingly comes in many different shapes and sizes. They can resemble numbers, letters of the alphabet, punctuation symbols, and common icons. This discovery of the unexpectedly intricate shapes of tortoise poop has prompted a side quest for me to try to collect a poop photo that resembles each letter of the alphabet. It is as if the tortoises have turned the island into their own deconstructed Ouija board with their secret message waiting to be discovered if you are brave enough to look. With my teammates on IAA now on this quest, it can sometimes feel like we are cloud watching or completing a Rorschach test, each sharing what we see in the strange shapes of the tortoise poop we find every day.
But as fun as searching for secret codes in tortoise poop is, their true beauty is much deeper than that. Mauritius used to have its own species of endemic tortoises that went extinct a long time ago. In their absence, an ecological niche went unfilled causing whole ecosystems to destabilize like removing one too many pieces of a Jenga tower. Introducing the closely related Aldabra tortoise to IAA served to test an interesting idea – can we fill the hole left by the Mauritian tortoises and restore the ecological roles they once played?
Tortoise poop sprouting new life! The seeds the tortoises passed through their digestive system are beginning to grow, and are the next step in island restoration. Photos:M. Terebiznik.
With the Aldabra tortoises on the island, they started eating invasive plant species that were outcompeting the endemic native ones. Those native plants that evolved alongside tortoises have adaptations against this grazing (specifically red veins on young plants that tortoises avoid), allowing them to grow and thrive. When tortoises do eat the fruits of adult native plants, they disperse their seeds. The seeds that pass through the tortoises’ digestive system are more likely to germinate compared to seeds that have not been eaten. Those seeds are then dispersed by their poop! In this way, tortoise poop is just one of the essential steps of island restoration.
Every tortoise poop I stumble upon is therefore not just a potentially amusing shape, but a legacy of conservation science decades in the making. All the tortoise poop I clean up in the nurseries is the next step in this cycle of more Aldabra tortoises getting ready to join us arm-in-arm in the fight to conserve these islands. As I look in the past and see all the work that has been done to restore these ecosystems, I also look forward to how much more can be done. I could not ask for better teammates in this battle for conservation than these giant Aldabra tortoises. With them, and of course their poop by our side, it is hard not to have hope.
Mariel Terebiznik
34th Canada’s New Noah
Mariel has always had a deep relationship with nature and conservation, having grown up spending most of her time outdoors in parks. Pursuing this passion, Mariel studied in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto, where she received both her Bachelors and Master of Science degrees. There, Mariel focused on being in the field as much as possible, travelling to Ecuador to work with lizards and spending an inordinate amount of time in Algonquin Provincial Park contributing to long-term monitoring projects. Mariel also co-founded and co-directs a grassroots organization called Field Research in Ecology and Evolution Diversified (FREED).
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