Back to School: A Turtle’s Head Start

It’s that time of year once again! As summer adventures come to a close, students begin shifting gears and buckling down for the year of learning ahead. For students in 22 lucky schools throughout Massachusetts, they’ll be sharing their classrooms with some tiny turtles who are looking to get a little head-start on their year too.

For Blanding’s turtles in Massachusetts, a head-start in schools can have a huge impact on their future. Biologists from the Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex and their partners across the state have discovered that allowing the hatchling turtles to grow a bit bigger and stronger in captivity for their first nine months of life can greatly improve their chances of survival in the wild.

The Blanding’s turtle is a semi-aquatic freshwater turtle that typically uses vernal pools, marshes, and slow-flowing wetlands for breeding and feeding. They can be identified by their highly-domed top shell, or carapace, and their unique bright yellow chin and throat that creates a turtley cheerful grin. Unlike some other freshwater turtle species, Blanding’s turtles cover a lot of ground, up to a mile, while searching for wetlands and suitable nesting habitat.

A Blanding’s turtle crossing a road. Photo by Courtney Celley/USFWS.

A smiling head-start turtle that was released at Assabet NWR in 2011. Photo by Keith Shannon/USFWS

When Blanding’s turtle hatchlings emerge from their nests, only around 1 in 5 of the quarter-sized, defenseless (their shells are actually soft after hatching) turtles avoid becoming a snack-sized bite for lurking predators in their first year. While low survival of hatchlings is common in many turtle species, Blanding’s turtle populations are in particularly serious decline due to a number of factors. This decline is partly because the long-lived turtle doesn’t reach sexual maturity until 15-20 years of age, making it very important for turtles to reach adulthood and reproduce. This can be especially challenging for adult Blanding’s turtles who frequently cross roads and other hazardous landscapes. Currently, the species is under review to determine if federal protection under the Endangered Species Act is warranted.

A Blanding’s turtle hatchling Photo by Rob Bowers/ USFWS

A portion of the hatchlings from each nest are randomly chosen for the head-start program and the remaining turtles enter their habitat as they naturally would. Raising the turtles in captivity during their first year before releasing them into the wild helps them grow to a larger size more quickly, decreasing their chances of being predated. During head-starting, the newly-hatched turtles are fed daily and kept in warm water, allowing them to grow three to four times faster than they would in the wild. Once they’ve grown for nine months, the turtles are released back into the wild. With this extra growing time, their first-year survival rate jumps to close to 80%, with an even higher chance of survival in subsequent years as they get even larger.

Blanding’s turtles aren’t the only ones benefiting! Students play a huge role in the growth and development of the turtles, while also gaining hands-on experience with scientific techniques and wildlife management. Students also learn about the challenges facing the turtles and their own environmental impacts.

Biologists measure the length of the hatchling’s carapace. Photo by Rob Bowers/ USFWS

Brian Bastarache, Natural Resources Program Coordinator at Bristol County Agricultural High School in Dighton, MA, has been one of the leading advocates for the use of head-starting to combat declining turtle populations. Brian and his students have been raising the majority of the program’s Blanding’s turtle head-starts every year since 2009 as well as working to head-start the federally endangered northern red-bellied cooters. He thinks the experience students gain from working with the turtles is more beneficial than any worksheet.

“Real-world work is real. Classroom lessons are simply trivia without an understanding of its application, and turtles happen to be well suited for this lesson. Students also foster a positive appreciation for their own capacity to engage in their work and contribute to a larger conservation effort.”

For Bristol County Agricultural High School Alumnus Kourtnie Bouley, the message of wildlife conservation inspired her to pursue a two-year internship with the Service, where she helped protect the nests, gather the hatchlings from the field, and process the turtle hatchlings at the refuge after helping to raise them as a student.

“Helping to head-start the turtles really helped connect what we were learning in the classroom to a real life conservation strategies. The overall satisfaction of being able to make a difference in the long term survival of this species was very rewarding. My experience with the Blanding’s turtles came full circle once working with the Service.”

Bristol Aggie hatchling dropoff

Kournie during her intership.

Currently, the largest population of Blanding’s turtles in the Northeast resides within  Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex. The population is so healthy and stable that it allows a portion of the head-started turtles to be introduced into new areas within their historic range. With numerous wetlands and upland nesting habitat, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge in Massachusetts (also within the Eastern Massachusetts NWR Complex) provides an ideal location for reintroduction. Since the program began in 2006, over 900 Blanding’s turtle head-starts have been released to the refuge. With another good season of hatching success this summer, the one-thousandth Blanding’s turtle head-start could be released next spring.

The long-term success of this program will not be known for several years, but if successful, it could result in the third or fourth largest population of Blanding’s turtles in the northeastern United States. And to the dedicated biologists, partners, teachers, and students involved with the head-starting project, it has already provided unforgettable experiences and long-lasting memories.

Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beetles!

While Ed Sullivan was introducing a group of ‘beetles’ to the United States back in 1964, there is another group of beetles that were already thriving here.  And even though their ‘band’ had begun to break up in the late 1980’s, it seems that they are slowly making their way back into the spotlight with the help of dedicated fans.  The puritan tiger beetle (Cicindela Puritana) has been listed as a ‘threatened’ species since 1990, and since 1993 great efforts came underway to help in the recovery process for this tiny species.  Once thriving throughout its historic habitat in the Connecticut River watershed from Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and areas in Maryland throughout the Chesapeake Bay, this species has been reduced to two primary locations: the Chesapeake Bay and single, isolated populations in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The puritan tiger beetle has been named for their behavior in how they catch their prey, by running it down and capturing it with long, powerful mandibles (jaws). Photo: Sue Wojtowicz/USFWS

Why Such Big Efforts for Such a Small Creature?

Since the enactment of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, many wildlife species have been placed on a list that categorizes them as either threatened or endangered.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is dedicated to protecting all species on that list, which includes the puritan tiger beetle; and the Service has established recovery efforts that will bring some hope for this small species.  To do this, a team of scientists, students, and volunteers alike have come together to help maintain remaining populations from disappearing forever. This summer, students and volunteers will be surveying the two isolated populations along the Connecticut River in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and one new site in Vermont in hopes of releasing more Puritan Tiger Beetles back to the wild.

The male (with the red marking) is smaller in size compared to the female. Photo: Rodger Gwiazdowski

The larve (right) is much smaller in contrast to the adult. About the size of a small wad of sand, the larva will spend more than a month under water during flood season. Photo: Rodger Gwiazdowski

The puritan tiger beetle is no different than any other species that are important to their habitat.  They, too, are part of the same ecosystem that we as humans should strive more to coexist with.  But to coexist with a species less than 1 inch in length can be challenging if people do not know they even exist.  That is where the dedicated conservation team comes in – as they establish baseline ecological research, they’re also spreading the word about the beetle, which is increasing curiosity among the public.  By showing people some of the hands on work being done in the field, and gaining the knowledge of where the beetles live, what they eat, and how they populate new habitat the conservation team will play a big part in understanding how beetles and humans can coexist together. Watching students and volunteers talk about the puritan tiger beetle recovery project to the public brings out the wildlife enthusiast in anyone, and to observe them in action together with the beetles in their habitat is to observe a conservation milestone in the making.

Please stay tuned to our next puritan tiger beetle blog post – where we focus on the members of the conservation team.

Hunting & Fishing Courses at Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge

“I’ve always been interested in learning to hunt, but never found the time due to many other interests,” says Stephen DeFlorio. Luckily, the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge in Sudbury, Massachusetts, has partnered with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, or MassWildlife to offer year-round introductory classes to novice hunters and anglers. Inspired by his son who participates in hunting, DeFlorio thought the basic education course would be a great opportunity to learn tools and techniques from seasoned outdoorsmen and women.

Last summer, in addition to hunter education courses, novice anglers had the opportunity to pick up a rod and reel for the first time. Participants learned how to bait a hook, cast and reel, and how to remove a fish from the hook during the children’s fishing clinic for youth under 18, and through the introduction to fishing course for adults. “Seeing the excitement that fishing brings to new anglers every year is what I enjoy most about teaching these classes,” says Jim Lagacy, MassWildlife Angler Education Program Coordinator.

Later in the year, participants in the winter beginner fly tying course were hoping to enhance their skills and become more independent in learning how to tie their own flies, like husband and wife team Van and Krista Berube who were preparing for a fly-fishing trip to Montana. Fishing since she was a young adult, Krista finds fishing to be a fun and relaxing wildlife-dependent activity, but felt she never had the time to learn new angling skills. With course length ranging from afternoon clinics to multi-day classes, there is opportunity for everyone to learn new angling skills.

These classes also foster an appreciation for the natural world and national wildlife refuges. “The more people that are involved in any outside activity, the more likely they are to support efforts to preserve the space and resources needed to continue their outdoor activities, like fishing,” says Van Berube. MassWildlife’s Jim Lagacy adds, “if you enjoy fishing, you’ll learn to respect the resource…and appreciate the outdoors.”

“Partnering with MassWildlife on programs related to fishing and hunter education makes perfect sense, since they have long-established programs and the dedicated resources to implement them,” says Refuge Manager Tom Eagle. “By offering the Refuge as a location to hold these classes, we can educate participants about the Service, the National Wildlife Refuge System, and the many outdoor recreational opportunities that we offer on the refuges in their neighborhoods.” Hunting and fishing are only two of the refuge’s “Big Six” wildlife dependent recreational opportunities, the other four being wildlife observation, wildlife photography, environmental education, and environmental interpretation.

For more information on beginner hunting and angling courses offered at Assabet River NWR, click here for hunting and here for fishing.

For more information on the “Big Six” at Assabet River NWR, click here.