Why Save Sea Turtles?
This series of essays discusses conservation of endangered sea turtles, covering reasons for conserving them (including "explanations that are valid even to 'anti-environmentalists'"), health assessment of sea turtles, turtle tracking, and related topics. Includes links to other sea turtle content and activities. From the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.

Turtles in Trouble
This short presentation centers on the protection of endangered sea turtles. It includes photos of sea turtles and of the danger they face (such as nets and excessive seaweed), a map showing one sea turtle's migration and a related video clip, and website links. From National
Geographic Kids Magazine.

This is not a gene mutation. This poor dear spent a great deal of its life wrapped up in a milk ring or some other, probably plastic, man made piece of trash. There are much worse cases (scroll down a bit).

Also, this animal is a red-eared slider, which is called a "turtle" in these parts. Your parts may vary.

"All that roadkill isn't just accidental -- an Ontario study has found almost three per cent of drivers, the majority of them men, swerve to intentionally steamroll snakes and turtles on the road."

Now this is one of those things that I just don't understand. You may think I'm just desperate for a new cause since I don't have the gopher tortoise entombment law to kick around anymore, but I'm serious here. These people creep me out. This goes beyond the basics for me: sure, it's true that animal abuse is a felony in many states. It's true that swerving to run over a reptile in the road is potentially dangerous to other drivers and to yourself. But what I'm talking about here is ... well, what creeps you out, buddy? Pedophile priests? That 35 year old guy who was trying to date your 16 year old daughter? Gays in the military? Reevers? Whatever that thing is that you think is just plain unnatural and doesn't have any right to exist, well, that's what I think of people who intentionally run over animals in the road. I'm just saying ... why?

"Drivers may run over wildlife for kicks and others may think they're doing everyone a favour by killing a snake since they aren't well liked, he said. But reptile roadkills are a problem because reptiles are declining, and turtles, unlike raccoons, take longer to become sexually mature, meaning they're killed on the road before they can reproduce.

Drivers should watch the road and slow down to avoid hitting wildlife. He suggests being very careful if you try to get the reptile across the road and always send the reptile in the direction it was headed."

It's becoming more and more well known that people who abuse animals are more likely to also abuse humans. So if you're one of those turtle-flattening creeps, please just stop it, and keep your sordid history to yourself.

Via.

The concept of the hive mind (the sci-fi variety) has interested me for some time. Specifically, as it pertains to humans in one of our societies on Earth, I often wonder: how would things be different? We as individuals would face a whole new set of challenges that I struggle to even imagine. So many of our daily activities, thoughts and conundrums exist because we don't know what another person is thinking. How can we get the client to like our pitch? Will my boss give me a raise? What is this car really worth, and what's the lowest price they'll give me? Is that gorgeous man interested in me or not? Those questions: wiped clean by the wrath of god. (Or, whatever. I will always make movie/TV references that you will not understand.) Indeed, there would be few questions at all. Would the question mark even be? Would we live life without the interrobang‽ It's hard to imagine what issues we would face, if we each as individuals knew everything without having to ask.

But I can tell you this. If turtles were able to communicate with each other through their minds, this would not happen:

House lights draw baby turtle to pool

Hatchling loggerhead sea turtles are blessed with much knowledge. That they even know to sand-paddle to the sea is an amazing feat of evolution. But if this poor pool-bound guy had a little help from his siblings' brain waves, well, he wouldn't have wound up swimming alongside floating lounge chairs with built in beverage holders. In conclusion: turtles do not have E.S.P.

Tune in again next Tuesday for a new installment of ... What if turtles had E.S.P.?

On her blog, Tricia of The Miss Rumphius Effect has reviewed a book called Turtle Summer. It is a journal chronicling the adventures of one mother and daughter during loggerhead turtle nesting season.

"After decades of over-hunting on the shores of the Pacific ocean, the Olive Ridley turtle has been rescued from the brink of extinction....It now seems this species of turtle will have a safe future in the hands of the local community."

See a video of hatchling Olive Ridleys heading for their new home in the ocean:
Click here for baby tortoises!

The Georgia Sea Turtle Center (newly added to my list of links in the right column) reports on the happy release of Bev the loggerhead back to the sea.

Bev's Bon Voyage
Bev Heads Back to the Sea: Part 1

Bev had been undergoing rehabilitation since summer 2006.

And this is just cooler than I can say:

Bev's Satellite Tracking

She's way out there, isn't she!

A sea turtle they named Taro washed up on the shore of a Hokkaido village with one flipper missing.

Sea turtles don't belong in the Hokkaido region, so Taro probably got swept there by currents. I'd think the missing flipper might have made it difficult for Taro to steer.

Taro has been rehabilitated to the point where he or she can now feed. The sea turtle's long term future is unsure, but for now they'll be keeping Taro at least until spring.

Loretta Tainao, the woman who purchased, cooked and ate a threatened sea turtle last year, has plead guilty and is being sentenced in February. (February 13, 2008, at 8:30am, to be exact. I'll be sure to report here.) The offense can bring a one-year maximum imprisonment with a fine of $100,000.

Here's the link: Sentencing of woman who cooked sea turtle set

And, no, she did not cook a set of sea turtles. There was just the one sea turtle. Thankfully. That kind of ambiguity is a pet peeve of mine.

Some photos of a turtle release at the blog Todos Santos Baja Pages - News and Rumors. These hatchlings entered the world on October 5, 2007. Good luck, sweet turtle hatchlings.

The Georgia Sea Turtle Center's own blog alerted me to their new sea turtle adoption program. From their web site:

"Now you can 'adopt a turtle,' and for only $50, you can contribute to that turtle's rehabilitation. When that turtle is released, you will be able to track the turtle online and know that you helped to make him/her healthy enough to go back home! Or, you can adopt a turtle that has already been released, helping to pay for the research we are conducting so we can help sea turtles all over the world!"

This sounds like a great way to raise money for the GSTC. Their main mission is to treat sea turtles that get stranded along the Georgia coast; their center on Jekyll Island provides cutting edge care for turtles and also serves as a research and education center.

Get all the details on the Georgia Sea Turtle Center's web site.

Turtles All The Way Down is considering an adoption ... we'll see if we have room in the offspring budget and let you know what happens.

New Zealand residents take notice when they see a red-eared slider on a riverbank.

Here in the United States there are a set of animals that you normally see. This varies by region, but we have pigeons, squirrels, chipmunks, innumerable varieties of birds, and in these parts there are the less-seen but ever-present raccoons, opossums, and even coyotes. These animals are all wild.

But visit a stream or a pond in a business park and you also see turtles. Usually, red-eared sliders. Of course they are native to the United States, but to a specific area: along the Mississippi and generally in the southeast part of the country. They do not naturally reside in Chicago, or New York, or the Bay Area. But if you've seen many man-made ponds or water retaining structures, or hiked along many rivers in the north, you've seen red-eared sliders far, far from home. Popular in the pet trade, you've also seen them in pet stores. But no businesses are running to pet stores to stock their ponds with the turtles; they simply show up.

They usually show up in the hands of their owners who release them into the wild. People tire of the care their pets require, they lose interest, or they realize that their pets have outgrown their aquarium and decide that the wild would be a better, more spacious place for them to live. No pet should ever be released into the wild. Not here in the United States, where red-eared sliders are native, because released pets can introduce unknown organisms into existing wildlife populations and wreak havoc. On a more personal level, an individual pet turtle may never learn how to take care of itself properly in the wild, and die.

And not in New Zealand, where red-eared sliders couldn't be much farther from home. You may not be aware of this, but there is hardly any wildlife native to New Zealand. A few lizards, frogs, and bat species are the only animals that originally lived on land in the country. New Zealand hosts many indigenous birds, many of which have lost their ability to fly since there are no ground-dwelling predators. (Though during my stay in New Zealand, disappointingly, I didn't see even a single kiwi — they and many local birds are nocturnal.) Everything else in New Zealand — the deer, the rats, the sheep, the cattle, the rabbits — have all been introduced by humans. There should be no snakes, no opossums, and no chelonians, so when a passerby sees a red-eared slider on the bank of a river he doesn't dismiss it.

Such was the case when Donatello was found sunbathing in November. A lone turtle on a riverbank, he was captured and delivered to the Department of Conservation. It turns out that New Zealanders don't exactly freak out about the turtles, since the climate is considered too cold for them to breed and eventually destroy the ecosystem. They are available for purchase in pet stores. But they do have an effect on the fish and flora when they are released in the wild, since they do have to eat. Still, the fear seems to be only of what might occur in the case of significant climate change; it wouldn't have to get much warmer in New Zealand for red-eared sliders to take root there. For now, the locals are keeping an eye on the species.

Australians are far less forgiving: red-eared sliders are completely illegal.

I predict this is going to be one of the next reptilian news trends.

I closely follow current events of reptiles and amphibians via dozens of Google Alerts that magically appear in my inbox daily. So I'm up on what's up in the herp world. For a long time, the newspapers had a lot to say about burying gopher tortoises alive. Then they had a lot to say about restricting the practice of burying gopher tortoises alive. Then there was the massive Australian cane toad invasion. Then we had the out-of-control iguana population in many Florida locales. This winter we have those iguanas falling out of trees.

Just bubbling to the surface recently is the story of the red-eared slider becoming the next cane toad in Australia. Just the other day I reported on red eared sliders in New Zealand, and as a footnote I stated that the species is outlawed in Australia. Apparently the slider has become a serious problem in Australia, where it can live and breed and has few predators. (The article cites two predators: foxes and goannas (monitor lizards).) In Australia you can't own red-eareds as pets, and they are certainly not allowed in the wild. They really aren't welcome anywhere. The turtle discussed in the article is to be euthanized.

It is rather important that they keep the sliders under control while they can, if possible. Otherwise they may compete too fiercely with Australian turtles and other water-dwellers for food. They really don't need another animal like the cane toad taking over the country. I predict that we'll be seeing more of the red-eared slider in the news before we see less of it, but I do hope that it doesn't wreak too much havoc.

View this video if only to see the cute tortoise grass-eating shot.