Turtle Census

Information now available for the summer 2012 project.

In summer 2010 the Virginia Living Museum conducted a census of the basking turtles in our lake.  Basking turtles are those turtles you spot sunning themselves on a log.  We wanted to know what species of turtles we had in the lake, and the percentage of these turtles that were invasive, or not native, to our area.  Oftentimes people think they are doing the right thing by letting a pet turtle go into a local lake, but if it isn’t native to the area it can have consequences for the local population.  Our study was the beginning of a multi year project to understand what types of turtles are in our lake and how quickly non-native turtles are taking over the pond from our native ones. Five budding scientists (of middle school age) assisted the staff (Education Associate Susan Summers, herpetology and curatorial staff) with this project.

We chose three dates during the summer to conduct this project.  We set out live traps to collect the turtles and waited for a few hours while the turtles inspected the traps and eventually were caught in them.

Before each turtle collection, students learned a little bit about turtle identification, biology, behavior and threats to these animals.  With the help of the curatorial department, the herpetology department and the aquariums department, students received mini-seminars each evening about a different aspect of turtle life. Students then assisted the staff with the retrieval of the traps, the removal of the turtles from the traps and data collection.

Each turtle was measured, identified and marked.  We marked them so we could determine if we caught the turtle again.  Marking was a painless process, much like filing your fingernail. To mark them we filed a small notch into the shell which corresponded to a number code.  Once we collected all the information and determined whether the turtle was a male or female, we released it back into the lake.

At the end of the summer we collected 21 red eared sliders (which are non-native to our area), 5 eastern painted turtles, 2 yellow bellied sliders, 2 northern red bellied cooters and 2 stinkpots.   We did recapture one red eared slider during our trapping and caught two older turtles that we could not distinguish the species of, other than that it was a type of slider turtle. 

We did on occasion catch snapping turtles in our nets.  We removed them safely and quickly, releasing them back into the lake.  We did not collect data from those animals.

It was clear from our preliminary study that indeed non-natives are the front-runner in our pond. We are hoping to continue this project for the next few years to get more information.  We will compare this information to a project done ten years previously to determine how significant a change in turtle species has occurred.

On Reptile Weekend  Feb. 19-21, our friends from the Animal Aid Club, will be on hand to discuss our project.  They assisted our budding scientists and were very helpful when the staff needed an extra pair of hands. We really appreciated their help with our project!

If you are interested in participating in 2012, please email Susan Summers or call 757-595-9135 (Education Reservations).  We will get you information about summer 2012.