boxturtles

So many Box Turtle populations have disappeared across North America that 124 nations enacted treaty protection in 1995 under CITES (Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species). Saving the Box Turtle will also depend on educating the public. Much of the harm we inflict on this gentle species stems from ignorance of its life patterns and survival requirements. Please be aware of the pertinent Box Turtle facts:

Roads that fragment habitats and increase intrusion by machinery and humans, as well as pet collecting, are major culprits in this species’ disappearance.

A box turtle lives most of its long life in a small parcel of land known as its home range, a plot not much bigger that a couple of football fields near its birth place. Year after year, it roams its small home range, returning to special sites where, since infancy, it has learned it can find water, mates, sun, shade, food and soft soil for nesting or hibernating.

A box turtle has a homing instinct that compels it to look for “home” if it gets displaced. Outside an 800-yard radius, a search for home rarely succeeds, but turtles may persist searching for years before giving up the hunt (if they survive that long). Before gaining sufficient familiarity with the habitat it ends up in, the turtle may starve or freeze.

IT IS A COMMON, BUT FATALLY WRONG NOTION THAT A BOX TURTLE THAT HAS BEEN PICKED UP AND RELEASED IN SOME NEW WOODLAND WILL STAY THERE AND LIVE “HAPPILY EVER AFTER.” Moving a turtle from its home range can be its death sentence because, as it searches for home, it will cross highways, suffer dog/cat maulings, or get stranded in unfamiliar terrain.

Removing an adult from a population has devastating consequences. Research indicates that box turtles rely upon habitual and chance encounters with one another to mate. Thus, a thinning population leaves behind many adults who, for the rest of their long lives, may never meet a mate and reproduce again.

The harm of pet collecting was not recognized sooner because the turtles left behind in the woods can live so long (up to 120 years). After humans collect some, they can still see adults living in those woods for generations, not realizing that the remnant is not a self-sustaining population. A vigorous, self-sustaining population probably needs more than 100 individuals per acre; such healthy populations are now a rarity.

If you are lucky enough to see a shy box turtle wandering the woods, please don’t touch it; simply revel in the peaceful privilege and joy of beholding an ancient body form that has been on the Earth since before the dinosaurs.