Rookie turtles lay record nests
Posted onDecember 5, 2023byAndrea Gielens|Fraser Valley Wetlands Wildlife, Native Pollinator Initiative, News and Events, Reptile and Amphibian Recovery, Western Painted Turtle
The western painted turtle is B.C.’s only remaining native pond turtle, and the Pacific Coast population is dwindling. In the wetlands of B.C.’s Fraser Valley, western painted turtles face many challenges, especially as eggs and tiny hatchlings. With no shortage of hungry predators and no care from their parents once they’ve hatched, only a few young turtles survive to become adults. When you add human activity to the mix, the rate of survival can be so low that a population becomes unsustainable. Since 2012, we’ve been working to improve those odds. In addition to protecting nests, we collect eggs from vulnerable turtle nests, artificially incubate them and head-start new hatchlings before releasing them back into the wild.
Photo above: Michelle Polley
As our butterfly and frog recovery programs in BC are winding down for the year, our turtle season keeps moving on. There were many great successes this year that give us immense satisfaction and will help to direct our efforts in the years ahead. We saw many of our headstart released turtles lay their first nests this year, including over 20 at one site in Aldergrove! This is amazing and exactly what we want to see from our release efforts.
Unfortunately we did have a mole at our nesting beach at Aldergrove that began targeting the nests. Because of our dedicated monitoring staff we were able to identify the problem, save some nests and remove any new nests that were laid and incubate them in our facility. This resulted in more than 100 hatchlings. The nests had a very high fertility and hatching success rate. Go team Aldergrove-turtles!
Since this population is now doing so well with released turtles having reached breeding age and is therefore no longer in need of additional headstarting we released the hatchlings back to where we had collected them without giving them the extra time overwintering. The mole can not predate the hatchlings once they have moved into the water, so the immediate risk was over and they could return. We adopted this method with some of our other release sites, taking in the eggs, hatching them out to assess viability and then releasing the hatchlings in the same summer.
This helps us gather information on the success of nests laid by our released animals, without having to dedicate the limited headstarting space to rearing them year round.
By optimising our efforts through hatch and release without an extended headstarting period, we are able to assist other populations that would benefit from reintroductions of head started animals. This includes Sunshine Coast and Texada Island which are more remote and the release of larger turtles will more rapidly benefit these depleted populations by shortening the time until the released turtles begin breeding in the wild.
We are also able to take in nests from landowners who have turtles nesting on their property, which supports existing significant populations. We can take in eggs from females hit by
vehicles, as we did this year from a female who did not survive and whose hatchlings we are now rearing.
This season we’ve been able to provide rehabilitation to five adult turtles found injured in the wild, as well as one very special turtle to the program, 2-2 or as we call her Tutu. Tutu was found during monitoring, she is from Burnaby (site two) and is the second turtle we caught there, hence her number 2-2. Tutu had been tracked by the program for over 15 years.
When she was captured this year for a routine check it was noted that she had a new eye injury and seemed impaired in her other eye. She was taken to the vet for assessment and found to be completely blind in one eye and partial sighted in the other, likely as a result of a fish hook injury. The vet recommendations were either euthanasia or retirement in captivity.
The population of turtles at Burnaby, while affected by some hybridization with Midland painted turtles, is known to have unique genetics among its genetically unhybridized Westerns.
Tutu is one of this genetically unique groups so we decided to give her a chance to live out her days in captivity.
Tutu will go into her first hibernation in our turtle winter chalet (fridge) this year and will be paired with a male in the spring. This is a conservation program after all, and while we might have to hand feed her, she has shown us with her past nesting successes in the wild that, in the safety of our care, she can continue to help save her species from extinction.
Tutu, our new long-term resident, was injured and could no longer live in the wild. However, she is from a genetically unique population, providing tremendous value to our program. Photo: Andrea Gielens
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